BOMANIUM AT HOME. 



LETTERS 



TO THE 



HON. ROGER B. TANEY, 

CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



BY 






SIXTH EDITION. 



NEW Y O R K : 

HARPER (fe BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
329 & 331 PEARL STREET, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 

1 8 5 2. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand 
eight hundred and fifty-two, by 

Harper & Brothers, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District 
of New York. 

Duke Uiiiversitv 
MAY 7 JSj/ 



TO ALL MEN, 

WHETHER PAPISTS OR PROTESTANTS, 
WHO CAN 

READ, REFLECT, AND REASON, 

WHO DESIRE THE EXTENSION OF 

CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, 

BY THEIR FRIEND, 

THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 



Tpie history of the following pages is very soon told. 
A few years ago I addressed some letters to Bishop 
Hughes, stating my objections to Popery, confining my- 
self mainly to its unscriptural and absurd doctrines. A 
controversy ensued, upon which the country has pro- 
nounced its opinion. My objections are yet unanswer- 
ed, and are likely to remain so. I know of nothing 
that promises relief to the good bishop save a " wink- 
ing Madonna," which the alms of the faithful, if liber- 
ally contributed, can readily secure. Any thing in that 
line is supplied to order at Rome. 

Fatal to Popery as are the objections drawn from its 
doctrines, yet more fatal are those drawn from its " ex- 
ternal arrangements," its government, its despotism, its 
spirit, its legends, its relics, and its influence on the 
moral, social, and political interests of the world. I 
have been often solicited to present this aspect of the 
subject to the public ; but to do this as I desired, I 
must needs see Romanism at home — I must visit " the 
Lady of the Seven Hills" in her own house, where she 
is permitted to exercise her maternal authority just as 
she wills. "With this object in view, I made a flying 
visit to Europe within the last year, in company with 
a friend, who has attained a distinguished rank in the 
medical profession, and who witnessed with me nearly 
all the scenes on the Continent described in these let- 
ters, and who will testify that they are not overdrawn. 
The present volume is the first fruit of that tour. 



VI PREFACE. 

I design these letters to be an appeal from the priests 
to the people of the Romish faith ; hence I address them 
to a layman of that faith. Upon the face of the earth 
there is no people so rohbed, deluded, and degraded by 
a priesthood, or upon whom so many motives and in- 
terests are pressing to assert their mental and spiritual 
independence. 

I design these letters to reach and to influence, if 
possible, the men of education and influence of this 
land, whether Papists or Protestants. Hence I address 
them to a man distinguished for his mental training, 
and by his high social and judicial position. No greater 
curse threatens this nation than the spread of Roman- 
ism in it. Almost any other evil would be a bJessing 
in comparison with this. And the man who courts the 
priest to get the votes of his dupes — who flatters the 
spies of the despots of Rome for the purpose of securing 
their assistance to vote him into power, should be re- 
garded as selling his country for a mess of pottage. 

I speak in these pages as I feel about the priests, 
and as all must feel who study them at home, and 
who witness the outrages they commit, and the lives 
which they lead. If any complain of a want of rev- 
erence, I plead guilty, and offer as my excuse an un- 
conquerable besetting sin to reverence only the sincere 
and the true. 

No new thing will have happened unto me if these 
letters bring upon me the curses of the priest. I will 
consider it a sufficient compensation for all that, if they 
only bring upon me the blessings of one poor soul saved 
by grace from their wiles, and made to rejoice in the 
glorious liberty of the children of Grod. 

March, 1852. 



CONTENTS. 



LETTER I. 
Introductory. — Object of these Letters. — Reasons for addressing them 
to Chief Justice Taney Page 13 

LETTER IL 
The Beginning to be understood. — A Church of God. — The Jewish 
Church became Corrupt — had Reformers and Reformations. — Mainly 
corrupted by Priests. — The Christian Church became Corrupt — 
through what Causes. — The setting up of Mohammedanism and Ro- 
manism. — Romanism not the Church Paul found in Rome . . - 20 

LETTER III. 
The Basilica of Saint Peter's a Temple of Art, not a Church. — A Type 
of the Romish Church. — Romanism a System of Policy to retain 
Power. — The Power it claims — its means of supporting them.. 27 

LETTER IV. 
Romanism not the Religion of the New Testament. — A Combination 
of various political Elements. — A political Compound. — Great Delu- 
sions always put forth monstrous Claims. — Priestly Pretensions to 
be spurned 35 

LETTER V. 
Romanism as a religious System. — Naples. — St. Paul Major a Type of 
the Paganism of Romanism. — Holy Water — how made. — Its Uses and 
Ends. — St. Anthony's Day. — The Origin of Holy Water 42 

LETTER VI. 
The Sistine Chapel. — Angelo's Painting. — The Artist's Reply. — In- 
cense. — Its Pagan Origin. — Candles : their Use, End, and Origin. — 
Candlemass in Rome. — The Light of Candles can not supply the Light 
of Truth 50 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

LETTER VII. 
St. Patrick never in America. — Our Poverty in Holy Wells and Places. 
— The Holy Wells at Ballahadireen. — Ballina. — Downpatrick Head. 
— Their Origin.— The Cell of St. Mary in Via Lata.— The Atroci- 
ty of opening fabulous Wells, and suppressing the Fountains of 
Truth Page 58 

LETTER VHL 
The Market-place at Naples. — A ludicrous Disaster at its Gate. — Ima- 
ges every where revered. — Church of St. Augustin. — Scene w^itness- 
ed there. — The Image of Peter at St. Peter's. — Worshiped by Pope 
and Cardinals. — The Pantheon : Scene there. — Rome, Pagan in Fact, 
Christian only in Name 65 

LETTER IX. 
Cumulative Evidence of the Paganism of Romanism. — Landing at Na- 
ples. — Appearance of the Ecclesiastics. — Convent house. — Church of 
Capuchins at Rome. — Preserved Monk. — Horrid Burying-place. — 
Nuns — how manufactured. — Whence Monks and Nuns, and for what. 
— Tools of the Priests and Corrupters of the People 74 

LETTER X. 

Letter from Rome dated A.D. 90. — The Paganism of Rome then, the 
exact Picture of Papal Rome now 82 

LETTER XL 
Sham Miracles. — Altar in the Catacombs. — St. Januarius — the Lique- 
faction of his Blood. — A terrible Incident for the Priests. — Ara Coeli. 
— Bambino. — A Scene. — History of Bambino. — Its wonderful Pow- 
ers - 91 

LETTER XII. 
Sham Miracles. — Holy House of Loretto — its History — Flight — Dimen- 
sions.^ — Miracles. — Litany of our Lady of Loretto. — Perpetrators of 
such Frauds, Impostors , 99 

LETTER XIII. 

Sham Miracles. — St. Anthony of Padua. — The Virgin of Modena. — 

Blood of Thomas a Becket.— Miracles of St. Patrick. — Miracles at 

Downpatrick. — St. Dagland's Grave. — The Boy exorcised. — Xavier's 

Miracles. — The wonderful Crab. — Priests not to be trusted ... 108 



CONTENTS. IX 

LETTER XIV. 
Relics. — Scala Sancta. — Sancta Sanctorum. — Relics of Santa Croce — 
of St. Praxede — of St. Peter's — in Milan — in Cologne. — Sanctioned by 
the Church. — Made to Order. — That they should be true, not essen- 
tial. — Their Effects upon the People. — These Forgers of Relics un- 
fitted to be our moral Teachers Page 1 17 

LETTER XV. 
Legends. — Sabbath evening in S. Carlo. — Gorgeous Scene there. — Le- 
gends from Butler — from Lives of English Saints. — Dr. Dufl[*'s Testi- 
mony. — Foolish Legends of the Dark Ages revived. — The Religion 
of Legends not fitted for America 128 

LETTER XVI. 
The Mass not the Worship of God. — A theatrical Exhibition. — Wal- 
densian Church in Turin. — High Ceremonies of Rome all theatrical. 
— Feast of the Nativity .-^Visit of the Wise Men. — Procession of 
Palms. — Judgment-hall of Pilate, -^Procession at Bonville. — Sab- 
bath evening Service in Edinburgh.— Popish Plays and Play-actors 
not suited to America .„.. 139 

LETTER XVII. 
Romanism tested by its Fruits in Rome. — No personal Liberty there — 
two Cases in Proof. — No security of Property — tv^ro flagrant lUustra^ 
tions. — No Religion there — no Sabbath — no Bible — no Preaching — 
no worshiping Congregations — no serious Devotion there. — Is Popery 
the best form of Religion for our Country ? 150 

LETTER XVIII. 
Fruits of Romanism. — Idolatry in Rome. — A Prodigy. — Pictures of Mary 
— her Names and Worship. — Immorality of Rome. — Scene at Naples 
— Key to priestly Profligacy. — Experience of Luther. — Mass for the 
Soul of Gregory XVI. — Vespers in the Sistine. — Cardinals — their 
Character. — Feelings of the Romans toward the Priests. — A Chat at 
Civita Vecchia. — Romanism detested at Rome ... 160 

LETTER XIX. 
Avignon. — Hotel de FEurope — mine Host. — Captain Packenham. — 
Elasticity of Romanism — the Pope — Priests. — Despotism of Roman- 
ism. — Friends of the Pope. — Neapolitan Catechism. — Priests the 
Watchmen of Despotism — their horrid Use of the Confessional — it 
should be the Abhorrence of all Flesh - . - , 171 



CONTENTS. 



LETTER XX. 



Character of Priests. — A Walk in Turin. — Bishops in England and 
America Spies of Rome. — Ecclesiastical Preferments the Rewards of 
Spies. — When Priests and Despots are in League, no Hope for the 
People. — Examples of priestly Despotism. — Curse from the Altar. — 
Case of the Antrim Miller. — Priests the Curse of Ireland. — Can they 
be a blessing to America ? Page 182 

LETTER XXI. 

Ballenglen. — An Incident. — Persecution of Converts. — Thrilling Fa- 
naticism al a Funeral. — The Way the Priests get Money. — An Inci- 
dent. — Cursing from the Altar. — Hard Case of Donovan. — Doing 
Penance in Sheets. — Priests' Power giving Way. — Anecdote of a 
Girl.— The Milkman.— Taking the Bull by the Horns.— The Curse 
of Ireland 192 

LETTER XXIL 
Deceivings of Priests. — Nunneries. — Taking the Vail. — Stories about 
Luther and Calvin. — Case of poor Bruley. — The Vaudois Monsters. 
— Bridge of Purgatory broken. — Father O'Flanagan. — Why these de- 
ceivings ? — Priests deserve Purgatory 205 

LETTER XXIII. 
Rome Intolerant. — Persecutions sanctioned. — Bishops sworn to per- 
secute — Deposed if they do not.-*- Wiseman's reply. — Proofs of In- 
tolerance — Waldenses — - Castelnau — Bezieres — Morland's Address 
— St. Bai'tholomew — Edict of Nantes revoked — Irish Massacre of 
1641 — other Evidences. — Two Skins.. ., - 217 

LETTER XXIV. 

■ Bad influence of Popery on the Nations. — Results from its Principles. — 
No exceptions. — Naples. — Rome.— Sardinia.^r^Female Degradation. 
— Ireland. — Protestant and Papal States compared. — Spain. — Colo- 
nies of Papal States. — Is Popery the best Religion for our Country? 
— Protestantism has made the United States what they are. — What 
vdll they become if surrendered to the Jesuit and the Priest ? . . 230 

LETTER XXV. 
Emigration — must increase — mostly Popish. — What to be done for them 
— Liberty — Conscience — American Spirit. — Tide stayed until now. 
e— Right of all Men to the Bible — Wickedness of withholding it.-- 



CONTENTS. XI 

Differences between Protestantism and Popery. — Edinburgh Irish 
Missions.— Rev. Mr. King. — Character of Priests. — Pilgrim of Struel. 
— Treatment Priests deserve Page 243 

LETTER XXVI. 
Strictures on Popery ended. — Popery to be extirpated — its End hasten- 
ing. — Friends of Freedom Enemies of Popery. — Suspended Wrath. — 
Religion essential to national Greatness. — What true Religion is. — 
Nature of the Church of God — its Object and End. — Tendency to vi- 
carious Religion. — Great Curse of Christendom 260 



KIRWAN'S LETTERS 

TO 

CHIEF JUSTICE TANEY. 



LETTER I. 



Introductory. — Object of these Letters. — Reasons for addressing them 
to Chief Justice Taney. 

Obligations to give reasons. Bishop Hughes. 

My dear Sir, — It will probably strike you and oth- 
ers with some degree of surprise that I address to you 
the following series of letters. And you have a right 
to ask, and I confess myself under obligations to give, 
the reasons why I select you from all the distinguished 
and honorable men of these United States for this pur- 
pose. Permit me to state these reasons in the briefest 
manner. 

It may have come to your knowledge that, within a 
few years, I addressed a series of letters to the Right 
Reverend John Hughes, the Roman Catholic Bishop 
of New York. In those letters I stated my objections 
to the doctrines and teachings of the Roman Catholic 
Church, with the view of bringing them before the 
bishop and the country for a new consideration. I ob- 
tained my object in part. The bishop read my letters 
— ^twice attempted a reply — and feeling the objections 
to be less vulnerable than their author, fled the con- 



14 kirwan's letters. 

Appeal to the people. Growth of moral power needful. 

troversy, and sought to cover his retreat by a few let- 
ters, famed for their weakness, low personalities, and 
want of manliness. But, although every where de- 
nounced by papal priests and their press, my objec- 
tions have received some consideration from the coun- 
try, and with what results a future day must fully re- 
veal. I return again to the discussion, with the desire 
to appeal from the bishop and the priest to the. people ; 
and who. Sir, from the ranks of those holding a nom- 
inal connection with the Romish Church in this land, 
could I have selected to whom to address these letters 
in preference to yourself? The motives which led 
me to select Bishop Hughes from the prelates of this 
Church have led me to select you from its people. And 
in saying this, I protest against the inference of wish- 
ing to reduce you to the level of the bishop. 

Again ; ours is a great and growing country. "With- 
in your remembrance — ^yes, within the years through 
which your name has been known in our public affairs, 
it has vastly extended in territory, population, and pow- 
er. And in all the elements of greatness it is constant- 
ly augmenting. Aheady do we, as a people, stand out 
before the world as one of its great powers ; and, if 
second, as only second to Britain, in maintaining free 
institutions, and in recommending them to universal 
adoption. It is of unspeakable importance that the 
moral power of our country should gTow with its 
growth. And you. Sir, as the chief and honored judi- 
cial officer of our republic, are in the very position to 
appreciate this truth, and to see it in all the magnitude 
of its application. And how much to do with the mor- 
al power of a nation, and with the right exercise of its 



LETTERS. 15 



Prevalence of Romanism a curse. The remedy with the people. 

physical, has the form of religion which obtains among 
the people ! Believing in my heart as I do, and as I 
shall attempt in subsequent letters fully to place be- 
fore you, that the prevalence of Romanism in our land 
will have only the tendency to reduce our country and 
people to the low level of Italy and the Italians, I wish 
to forewarn, and thus to forearm the American people. 
And this I shall aim to do, not by appeals to passion 
or prejudice, but by a careful and honest statement of 
facts, and examination of principles, and reference to 
history, and to the state of things now actually exist- 
ing. And in order to attract toward my statements 
the attention of our entire country, I address myself to 
you. The higher our glorious flag is hung, the more 
eyes will behold its stars and its stripes. 

Again ; I address these letters, Sn, to you, because 
I desire to appeal from the priests to the people ; and 
especially to the people yet under the influence of the 
teacliings of Romanism. With the people is the rem- 
edy for all our civil wrongs. This is a principle to 
which you have given your individual, political, and 
official sanction. Grovernment is for the benefit of the 
people ; and when rulers pervert the government to 
their own purposes, and trample upon its written Con- 
stitution, and oppress the people, then the remedy is 
with the people — peaceably if they can, by revolution if 
necessary. A government perverted by cunning from 
its great ends is no longer binding upon its subjects ; it 
is their duty to restore it to its original foundations 
— peaceably if they can, by rebellion if they must. No 
American — scarcely any monarchist — will question 
these positions as to civil affairs. And are they not of 



16 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 



1 




Mission of the Church. Priests yield power slowly. 

equal application to our religious ? If an institution 
was ever set up in our world for the good of mankind, 
it is the Church of Grod. Good will to men — to bind 
all men in love to Grod, and in love to one another — is 
its great mission. And I hope to prove to your entire 
satisfaction, that as far as the Romish Church is con- 
cerned, its priesthood have perverted it, as to its con- 
stitution, doctrines, and institution, so as to debase and 
grind the people — and for their own ends ; that they 
assume the position in the Church which absolute mon- 
archs do in the state ; that the Church exists by them 
and for them. /Now, Sir, when men by craft obtain 
the possession bf high powers, whose exercise brings 
them great gain, they are slow to relinquish them ; 
they are proof against all the weapons of reason and 
logic. And this is especially true of high ecclesiastics, 
who have ever manifested an amiable tendency to the 
belief of a divine warrant for as much oppression as 
may be needful to support their claims and their pomp. 
Where and when did they ever freely surrender unlaw- 
ful power ? Not among the Jews — ^nor among the hea- 
then — nor under the shadow of the crescent — nor with- 
in the dominions of Romanism. Priestly power, always 
intrenching itself behind divine sanctions, has never 
yielded save before the power of the people ; and not 
even then without thundering its anathemas against 
those who had overthrown it. Need I stop. Sir, to give 
illustrations of all this ? They stand, thick as the trees 
of our unbroken forests, along the history of our race. 
The power of the Romish priesthood is terrific ; and it 
claims even more than it can exercise. It has sought 
to crush every thing that opposes it. Where it is the 



KIR WAN's LETTERS, 17 

United effort needed. A method of reasoning. 

controlling power, it has put out the light of the Bible 
and of general literature ; it has put its shackles upon 
the press and upon human liberty. Nor will the Pope 
or the priest relinquish the power they wield so disas- 
trously to all the interests of man, and for their own 
benefit, but at the bidding of the people. I desire to 
enlist the people in one great and united effort for the 
overthrow of this power ; and hence, with the hope of 
thus better reaching them, I address these letters to 
you. I hope the time has forever passed when the 
voice of the people was forbidden to mingle with that 
\of ecclesiastics in controversy upon religious systems 
and topics. Look at Scotland, and England, and Italy, 
and then ask, have the people no interest as to the form 
of religion which shall obtain among them ? If they 
have, I wish them to show it ; if they show it not, 
then let them bare their necks for the priestly yoke. 

Again ; you are yourself, if not really, at least nom- 
inally, in connection with the Romish Church. De- 
scended, as I learn, from an honorable family of the 
Roman faith, you have received from them that faith 
as an heir-loom, which, although treated by you with 
indifference, is not yet cast away as a gross imposture. 
Indeed, presuming on your fidelity to that system of 
hoary error, a Romish prelate has recently dedicated to 
you a work on Theology, which embodies in it a vin- 
dication of the ferocious and infernal Inquisition ! The 
priests and people of that faith seek to make out of your 
name and position all that they fairly can for its sup- 
port. If not a reasonable, this is, at least, a common 
way of argumentation. Perhaps we all seek an argu- 
ment for our systems from the honorable and worslii])- 



18 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

Hopes from your decision. 

fal names that have embraced them. Now, Sir, I have 
a desu'e that the facts and statements which I have to 
make should pass in review before your well-trained, 
logical, and judicial mind. Brought up to a profession 
which proverbially sharpens the intellect for just dis- 
crimination, and having risen to the very highest hon- 
ors of that profession, you are as capable of separating 
the false from the true, the fiction from fact, the seem- 
ing from the real, as any other American citizen. Hop- 
ing and believing that you have not surrendered to a 
gossamer theory the right of private judgment, I ven- 
ture to address my letters to you, with the expectation 
that if they receive the attention which then* subject- 
matter deserves, you will openly renounce the entire 
delusion, and withdraw from its support your honored 
name and official station. May I not hope for more 
than this ? If, on review, you find the system false, 
and blighting in all its direct influences, may not the 
expectation be indulged, that a mmd signalized as is 
yours by so many triumphs at the bar and on the bench, 
stimulated by philanthropy and a love of country, will 
rise above the trammels of early education, and the fear 
of denunciation by foreign prelates and priests, and de- 
vote its energies to the saving of our land and its in- 
stitutions from all the influences and machinations of 
Romanism ? If I have no line by which to measure 
the insolence of a priest that would dedicate a work, 
containing a vindication of the Inquisition, to the Chief 
Justice of the United States of America, neither have 
I any line to measure the good that you might eflect 
by throwing yourself into a hearty opposition to a sys- 
tem whose only fit name is '' Mystery of Iniquity." 



LETTERS. 19 



No reply required. A worthy reply, if any. 

Such, Sir, in brief, are my reasons for addressing 
these letters to you. I have no desire to draw you into 
religious controversy of any kind, nor to withdraw your 
attention from the high duties which your country has 
devolved upon you. As I address you anonymously, 
no law of controversy or courtesy requires you to reply. 
Although unknown to me, save as you are known to 
the whole country, by character, for that character I 
have the very highest respect. And should your many 
and important public duties permit you to give suffi- 
cient time duly to weigh the statements which I shall 
present for your consideration and that of the public, 
it will give me unfeigned pleasure in any way to hear 
from you. I have no fear that, like our friend in New 
York, you will commence answering my letters before 
you read them ; and, should you reply, I have no fear 
that you will write a line unworthy of your name and 
station. The characteristics which entitle a man to 
wear the ermine as Chief Justice of this great repub- 
lic, are very different from those which secure for a cun- 
ning priest a foolish fillet made from the wool of holy 
sheep. 

With great respect, yours. 



20 KIRWAN's LETTERS. 



■ 



Begin at the beginning. There is a Church. 



LETTER II. 

The Beginning to be understood. — A Church of God. — The Jewish 
Church became Corrupt — had Reformers and Reformations. — Mainly 
corrupted by Priests. — The Christian Church became Corrupt — 
through what Causes. — The setting up of Mohammedanism and Ro- 
manism. — Romanism not the Church Paul found in Rome. 

My DEAR Sir, — In all discussions Vv^hich involve great 
principles and interests, it is always well to begin with 
the beginning. When the beginning is well under- 
stood, we may carry a stream of light with us to the 
end. And we may so simplify the most abstruse and 
erudite subjects as to place them within the compre- 
hension of the great masses of men. Permit me, then, 
in the present letter, to ask your attention to some 
statements as to the Church of G-od, and the rise of 
the Church of Rome. As I have never heard to the 
contrary, I will take it for granted that you are a be- 
liever in the Bible. May I not hope that, as the chief 
expounder of the laws of a great and Christian people, 
you make it the man of your counsel and the guide of 
your life ? 

Admitting the truth of the Bible, it is beyond all 
question that Grod has erected a Church in our world. 
Until the coming of Christ, that Church was confined 
to the Jews, and its rites were administered under the 
Mosaic economy. Although existing under types and 
ceremonies, the shadows of good things to come, it was 



LETTERS. 21 



Jewish Church corrupted. Had its reformers. 

truly the Church of Grod. Yet how sadly was it cor- 
rupted ! How deeply, at times, did it sink into the most 
gross idolatry ! How often were its true members re- 
duced to a few who bowed not the knee to Baal ; and 
while false priests were offering their incense upon a 
thousand altars, and the people were clamorous in the 
praises of false prophets, who daily fared sumptuously 
at king's tables, how often were the true priests, and 
prophets, and people, compelled to seek refuge ^4n des- 
erts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the 
earth." In its day and dispensation, the Jewish was 
the true Church of God in our world, and yet it fell 
into an idolatry as gross as any that existed among the 
surrounding heathen, and its priests and people became 
to every good work reprobate. And the great object 
of heaven in raising up the prophets who successively 
appear in the progress of its history, was to recall the 
minds of the people from their idols to the considera- 
tion of first principles and of Grod's revealed will ; and 
by reforming their sentiments, to reform their lives. 
And Elijah, and Elisha, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, were 
only the Luthers and the Calvins, the Melancthons, 
the Whitefields, and the Wesleys of the dispensation 
which has vanished away, each blowing a reformation 
trumpet in Israel, calling upon priests and people to re- 
turn from their idolatry and wickedness unto Israel's 
God. Every thing. Sir, with which man has to do, is 
liable to corruption and perversion, because, in his best 
:^tate, man is an imperfect being. And I make this 
statement for the purpose of impressing this one truth, 
that while God was the God of the Jewish, as he is 
the Gofl of the Christian Church, he permitted that 



22 kirwan's letters. 

The true Church where ? Christian Church. 

Church to fall into a state of backsliding so awful as 
to render successive reformations absolutely necessary. 
Ajid the Bible reveals the pregnant and warning truth, 
that the priests, high and low, and the pretending 
prophets, were the main corrupters of the faith and wor- 
ship of the people. But where, you will ask, was the 
true Church in these days of backsliding, idolatry, and 
corruption ? In the dens and caves of the earth, with 
those who clung to the truth of Grod, and who bowed 
not the knee to Baal. 

In the fullness of time the Savior came into the world, 
and the Jewish was changed for the Christian dispen- 
sation. The Church was continued, but under a new, 
and better, and brighter economy. The rites and cere- 
monies of Judaism were laid aside for the things which 
they signified. The thoughts, the manner of life, the 
doctrines of the Savior were perfectly simple, and equal- 
ly simple was the dispensation which he introduced. 
The power of his religion lay in its truthfulness and 
simplicity, and in its adaptation to the moral wants of 
the world. He laid down his life for sinners, that 
through the efficacy of his atoning sacrifice, all of ev- 
ery nation, tongue, and people, who should believe on 
him, might be saved. The only qualification required 
for admission to his Church was belief in him — ^the be- 
lief of the heart, which manifests itself in a holy life. 
And he set apart a class of men, the models of a per- 
petual ministry, in his Church, to proclaim to the ends 
of the earth that G-od was reconciling the world unto 
himself through his Son. The object of the ministry 
was to preach salvation through a Savior ; the duty of 
all who heard them was to believe in the Savior preach- 



LETTERS. 23 



Causes of its corruption. 



ed ; and the privilege of all who believed was to con- 
nect themselves with the company of believers, called 
the Church, and there to unite their energy and influ- 
ence with those of others in extending the news of the 
common salvation to the ends of the earth. Such was 
the Church of Christ as it came from the hands of its 
divine founder. 

But it was committed of necessity to imperfect men ; 
and although the promise was given that the gates of 
hell should not prevail against it, yet that promise did 
not protect it against assault from without, nor against 
corruption within. A true ministry and true believers 
never have, and never will, cease from the earth until 
the great ends are obtained for which the Church was 
established ; yet we see in the Church of Christ the 
very things recurring which in previous ages had be- 
fallen the Jewish Church. Converts from Judaism 
were multiplied to the new faith, who brought with 
them Jewish prejudices and notions, which they sought 
to ingraft on the Church, and not without success. 
Converts from the heathen were multiplied, who brought 
with them their prejudices and notions, and which, 
with like success, they sought to ingraft on the Church. 
New systems of philosophy arose, which sought to in- 
corporate themselves with the teachings of Christ, and 
thus to render those teachings subservient to their ends. 
As the martyr age passed away, the Church became 
secular, its ministry unconverted, and its entire spirit 
changed. It sought to gain the world by relaxing its 
severe morals, and sinking its great truths, and by con- 
formity to existing customs and habits. In the worst 
sense of the passage, it became " all things to all men." 



24 

Systems of Rome and of Mecca. 

The ambition of priests soon led them to model the 
Church after the fashion of the state ; and thus, by- 
gradual stages, the work of corruption and of external 
conformity progressed, until in a few centuries the 
Church of Rome was fully developed, which, although 
it contains more truth, bears a no more striking like- 
ness to the Church established by Christ than does Mo- 
hammedanism. While the systems of Rome and of 
Mecca agree in some things, they differ much in their 
setting up. That of Mecca was framed by a bold im- 
postor, was most artfully adapted to human nature, and 
was established at once by violence, while that of 
Rome was the gradual growth of centuries. One cor- 
ruption prepared for another — one step toward supreme 
power and ghostly dominion prepared for another — 
what was begun in one age was perfected in the next ; 
and thus, by slow but sure stages, " the mystery of in- 
iquity" grew and became compacted, until the Church 
of Christ was divested of its simplicity and beauty, and 
its light was extinguished in all its high places. The 
system of Mecca might be compared to a large tree 
planted at once, and that of Rome to a tree which grew 
up from the seed, striking its roots deeper from year to 
year, and spreading wider and wider its branches. Or, 
to use a Scripture parable, the enemy sowed tares 
among the good seed, and the corrupt clergy, finding 
it would be most to their advantage to cultivate them, 
fostered and cherished them, and nursed them to a vig- 
orous growth, until they choked the good seed, and 
flourished almost alone in the garden of the Lord. Ro- 
manism is not Christianity ; on the most liberal allow- 
ance, it is but little more than a caricature of it. 



KIR WAN's LETTERS. 25 

Elements of Romanism. The Church with the truth. 

That you. Sir, and all men may see this, just run 
over the list of things which, when combined, form the 
Romish system, not a pretext for which can be found 
in the Christian Scriptures, nor in the life and labors 
of Christ and his Apostles. They are such as these : 
a pope, cardinals, the mass, auricular confession, pen- 
ances, an infallible earthly head, robed priests, purga- 
tory, praying to the saints, feasts and fasts, monks, 
friars, nuns, celibacy, holy water, mitres, crosiers, pal- 
liums made from the wool of holy sheep ! These, ce- 
mented and jointed by other inventions of men, and 
some scriptural truths, make up the system of Roman- 
ism, which differs as much from the religion of Christ 
as does the harlequin dressed up to play the buffoon 
from a plain, sensible, and well-bred gentleman. 

You, Sir, will esteem it no answer to all this to say 
that if this statement is true, the promise of Christ to 
his Church has failed. This is begging the question. 
God's Church existed when the priests and people of 
Judea were idolatrous, and when Obadiah thought that 
he was left alone. The Church of Christ is with those 
who believe and practice the truth. Nor especially is 
it any answer that the Romish is the oldest, and, there- 
fore, the true Church. Age never converts the lie into 
a truth — ^the forged into the real. If so, the Jew or the 
Pagan have the argument against the Christian ; and 
the " old wives' fables," of which Paul speaks to Timo- 
thy, may supplant the teachings of the Apostles. The 
Church, as established by Christ, we find in the New 
Testament — ^the Romish Church we find in the decrees 
of Councils, in the writings of the Fathers, and in the 
reveries of enthusiasts. That of Christ is the oldest ; 

B 



26 kirwan's letters. 

All institutions liable to corruption. 

and to it all belong who receive the New Testament, 
and live as it teaches. 

To yon, Sir, or to any thinking man, it is no new 
truth that the best and most safely-guarded institutions 
are liable to corruption and perversion. The more pure 
they are, the more are they opposed to our natural self- 
ishness, and the greater will be the effort to pervert 
them. Have not governments been corrupted ? Have 
not despotic supplanted free institutions ? Have not 
unlawful acts grown into precedents, and precedents 
become laws ? Have not the grants of weakness or of 
favor been made the foundations of claims of right ? 
Have not privileges enjoyed because of the ignorance, 
indolence, or weakness of others, been claimed as divine 
rights ? The setting up, in the way that v/e have 
stated, of the Romish Church in our world, is no new 
thing under the sun. And I here aver that the present 
awfully despotic goverimient of Rome differs no more 
widely from the old Roman Commonwealth, than does 
the present Church of Rome from that which was found 
there by Paul the Apostle, and which was greatly con- 
firmed and enlarged by his labors. Of this, more in 
the sequel. 

With great respect, yours. 



kirwan's letters. 27 

Saint Peter's. My farewell to it. 



LETTER III. 

The Basilica of Saint Peter^s a Temple of Art, not a Church.— A Type 
of the Romish Church. — Romanism a System of Policy to retain 
Power. — The Power it claims — its means of supporting them. 

My dear Sir J — On entering the splendid and sumptu- 
ous Basilica in Rome, dedicated to Saint Peter, I found 
it exceedingly difficult to conceive of it as a church de- 
voted to the service and worship of G-od. And the dif- 
ficulty increased v^ith every visit made, until every idea 
of its being a church at all vanished from my mind. 
I have stood under its great cupola, and have gazed 
with rapture on the wonders and proportions of archi- 
tecture above and around me. I have walked around 
its massive pillars, its magnificent walls, its gorgeous 
chapels, until wearied with the sensations of pleasure 
and delight excited by its statuary and paintings. I 
have explored its subterranean vaults by torch-lights ; 
and from the ball, high in the air, which surmounts 
its dome, I have looked down upon the old historic city 
which seemed to lie at my feet. As, on the eighth day 
of June, 1851, I passed down the '' piazza" on which 
it fronts, I turned round to take of it a full and last 
view, and, believing that I never should behold it again, 
a feeling of sadness came over me. I took off" my hat, 
and bowed to it, most profoundly, a final farewell. 

But Saint Peter's is not a church dedicated to tlie 
worship of God. There is no Bible there on all its al- 



28 kirwan's letters. 

God not worshiped there. Type of the Church. 

tars. There is no preaching of the G-ospel there. Mass- 
es are constantly mumbled there by crowds of priests, 
but there are no congregations. In the same chapel I 
have seen some priests creating G-od at the altar, while 
others, with a guide-book in their hand, were criticis- 
ing the pictures and statuary around them, talking and 
smiling as if in a museum. And all this on the Sab- 
bath day. You will find young ragged Romans play- 
ing '' hide and go seek" amid its pillars, and squalid 
beggars imploring your charity even at the base of the 
magnificent ^^baldacchino" which surmounts the altar 
at which the pope alone can say mass ; but the Gospel 
is not preached there, nor is G-od there worshiped. It 
is not, then, a church ; it is simply and only a Temple 
of the Arts, where may be seen, in wonderful combina- 
tion, the highest efforts of architecture, and the most 
splendid creations of the chisel and the pencil. And 
regarded simply as such a temple, it is, beyond compari- 
son, the most magnificent in the world. 

Now, Sir, in many things, this Basilica of Saint Pe- 
ter's is a true type of the entire Romish Church. That 
Church is far more a system of policy than a religious 
system ; and is framed more with a view to sustain 
and to extend its power, than to extend the knowledge 
of salvation through Jesus Christ. And I see but lit- 
tle more reason for calling that system and people, of 
which the Pope is the head, a Church, or the Church, 
than I do for calling the Russian or the English gov- 
ernment a Church, as in Russia the emperor, and in 
England the queen, is the head of the Church. And 
the Church of Rome, like the governments of England 
and Russia, is simply a system of policy to perpetuate 



LETTERS. 29 



Claims of the Pope. 



the power by which it has lorded it over people and na- 
tions, and bowed their minds and souls to its will. Per- 
mit me to present to you, Sir, a few considerations bear- 
ing on this important point. 

The Pope of Rome claims to be the successor of Pe- 
ter, and, as such, to be the vicar and vicegerent of 
Christ upon earth. In this character he assumes spir- 
itual supremacy over the entire Church, regarding 
those who admit his claim as his faithful, and those 
who reject it, as do all Protestants, as his rebellious 
subjects, but not less amenable to his jurisdiction. In 
virtue of this spiritual supremacy, he claims a supreme 
sovereignty over things temporal as well as spiritual — 
over all the kings and nations of the earth. So that, 
in the words which have been often applied to him by 
his votaries, in their literal sense, he bears '' in his hand 
a two-edged sword, to execute vengeance upon the hea- 
then, and punishment upon the people, to bind their 
kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron." 
And while the first claim is unfounded, and the second 
monstrous, yet the whole machinery of Romanism, 
from beginning to end, from the Arctic to the Antarc- 
tic circle, has for its grand aim the support of these 
unfounded and monstrous claims. The claims are pro- 
digious, and I may admire or despise the gigantic am- 
bition or fanaticism that makes them — the means de- 
vised for their support display amazing craft and cun- 
ning, and a wonderful adaptation to their end ; but 
what title have the asserters of such claims, or the de- 
visers of the means to sustain them, or those that ad- 
mit them, to the name of a Church, or The Church ? 
It is an okl trick to compensate by arrogant claims for 



30 KIR^VAN'S LETTERS. 

Chief elements of Rcmanism. Monstrous claims. 

the want of title ; and the mam elements of the Rom- 
ish Church are monstrous claims — monstrous means to 
sustain them — and the monstrous faith of its people. 
It is no more a Church of G-od, than is Saint Peter's a 
temple for his true Avorship. It is a system of policy 
to retain power, to strengthen which every thing in the 
way of doctrine or Scripture is made to bow. 

Unlawful possession, whether of property or power, 
always leads to unworthy means to secure it. With a 
good title, we are always at rest ; when conscious that 
our title will not bear investigation, we feel always in 
jeopardy ; and to cover one fraud we will commit ten 
others. A thousand illustrations of this principle will 
present themselves to your mind ; but I ask, Sk, your 
attention to some of those frauds by which the Romish 
Church seeks to fortify itself in the possession of the 
power which it claims, and which it wields with such 
disastrous effects on all the higher interests of human- 
ity. This is a comprehensive topic, including almost 
every peculiarity of Romanism, and must not be dis- 
missed with the few barren statements I shall now 
place before you. 

To prop up the power which by fraud and falsehood 
it has been accumulating for ages, it claims a mon- 
strous authority for its priests. The Pope is the vice- 
gerent of Christ and the centre of unity. Bishops are 
his agents, and receive authority from him ; priests are 
the agents of the bishops, and receive authority from 
them. To resist the priest is to resist the bishop, and 
the Pope, and Jesus Christ himself. To rebel against 
the authority of the priest, is to rebel against Heaven ! 
The sacrament of ^'holy orders" means, with them. 



LETTERS. 31 



Holy orders. Involves our liberty. 

something more than the giving of canonical authority 
to men to dispense the rites of the Church ; it invests 
every man, however senseless or immoral, v^ith the 
power of shutting and opening heaven and hell, and 
of sending his fellow-men to the one or the other, as 
they fear him or frown upon him. Is not the attempt 
to make men believe that ^^ holy orders" or ^^ ordina- 
tion" confers any such power, the perpetrating of a 
gross fraud upon the world ? You, Sir, are our chief 
justice, by law appointed — the decisions of your court 
are binding until reversed. But there are other justi- 
ces in the world, and administering law under govern- 
ments very different, in form, from ours. Are they 
not lawful justices also ? And, as the powers that be 
are ordained of (rod, have not they divine authority for 
the due exercise of their functions as well as you ? 
And to make " orders" or " ordination," whether con- 
ferred by Pope, bishop, or presbytery, any thing else 
than the simple authorizing of a man, according to es- 
tablished rules, to preach the Grospel and to administer 
ordinances, is to perpetrate a priestly fraud, and for the 
maintenance of priestly power. The liberty of the 
Church and of the world is bound up in the question 
of " orders" and " ordination ;" and you. Sir, and every 
other educated layman, should see to it that the pedan- 
tic priests and bishops who go through our land flout- 
ing their authority and their lawn in our face, and sep- 
arating us from the gracious care of our Father who is 
in heaven, because our faith is not large enough to ad- 
mit their claims, should not have it all their own way. 
They are all, so far forth, engaged, whether they hail 
from Rome or from Oxford, in palming an imposition 



32 K I R W A N ' S LETTERS. 

The Bible prohibited. Replies of my valet. 

on their race, and are not the less culpable because 
some of them may be honest. 

AVhile the Romish Church thus claims enormous 
authority for its priests, it virtually forbids the "Word 
of Grod to its people. I say virtually, because I do not 
wish to enter into the question as to the teachings of 
the Church on this subject, which are wisely of such 
an elastic character as will enable a bishop to assert in 
New York, and to deny in Rome. Yet a real proliibi- 
tion of the Scriptures to the masses is not a position 
very difficult to establish. But what is the actual 
state of things where Popery is in power ? The Bible, 
as a rule, is unknown in Italy. I have conversed with 
a noble Christian man who was exiled from Rome for 
introducing into that city some copies of the Latin Bi- 
ble. After having in vain sought for a Bible in many 
shops in Naples, I said to my valet, a sensible man of 
fifty, " John, have you ever read a Bible V^ '' No, 
sn," was the reply. " Have you ever seen a Bible ?'' 
Again he replied, " No, sii\^' " As God has given the 
Bible to man, why is it not to be found in Naples ?" 
" The bishop and priests forbid its circulation, sir, and 
forbid us to read it." " And why, John, do they for- 
bid your reading of it?" '^ 0," said he, with that 
shi'ug of the shoulders so peculiar to the Italian, ''they 
think that if we should read the Bible, we would be- 
come Protestants, and they would not like that." Here 
is the revelation of the whole secret. And, as the 
world knows, you can be no stranger to events which 
have within a few weeks transpired in Florence, where 
individuals have been exiled, imprisoned, and con- 
demned to the galleys for meeting to read the Bible in 



LETTERS. 33 



Why fear the Bible ? The fraud of withholding it. 

private houses. And why, Sir, this fear of the Bible ? 
Because it is the divine charter of the Church of Grod 
and of our religious rights. If any man questions your 
authority, you have no fear of his reading the Consti- 
tution of the United States. The Prime Minister of 
England never thinks of forbidding the people to read 
its Constitution and laws. If a question should come 
before your court for decision in reference to a close 
corporation, which sought to eject a large number of 
citizens from their lands and tenements ; and if, on ex- 
amination, you found that the said corporation had se- 
creted all papers pertaining to their own claims, and 
to the title of the citizens, and had forbidden the citi- 
zens to make any investigations as to their rights, 
would you not be liable to infer that there was a dead 
fly in the pot of ointment ; that the corporation wished 
to perpetrate a glaring fraud ? Now, Sir, the Romish 
priesthood is a close corporation ; that corporation puts 
forth claims in the name of God, deeply affecting your 
individual interests and mine, as well as those of all 
men and of all nations. Those claims, if right, must 
be founded on the Bible ; if not there authorized, they 
are not to be allowed for a moment, and their claim- 
ants should be held up to universal execration. That 
they are not authorized by the Bible, Pope, bishops, 
and priests well know ; and hence their dire, their 
sleepless opposition to its circulation, and to its perusal 
by the people. And by withholding the Bible from 
those to whom Grod has given it, they are perpetrating 
a great fraud upon the people, and simply and only 
for the purpose of perpetuating their ghostly power. 
Sir, there is just as much to support Romanism in the 

B2 



34 

Romanism a system of policy, not a Church. 

Bible, as there is in the Constitution of the United 
States, and no more. And if Pius IX., or his spy in 
New York, deny this, I am willing to meet either of 
them before you, and, after a full hearing on both sides, 
to leave the decision of the question with you. And 
surely they will not question your sympathies, seeing 
they have had confidence enough in their Lateran 
leanings to dedicate a work to you containing a vindi- 
cation of the bloody Inquisition. 

Romanism, then, is a system of policy framed to 
sustain and extend its power, and by means such as 
we now state to you. Can it be a, or the, Church of 
Grod ? As a system of policy, it is, like Saint Peter's, 
a gorgeous structure : it contains within it many things 
which strike the beholder with wonder ; but, Sir, can 
it be a Church of Grod ? 

With great respect, yours. 



35 

Pope and cardinals in the Sistine. 



LETTER IV. 

Romanism not the Religion of the New Testament. — A Combination 
of various political Elements. — A political Compound. — Great Delu- 
sions always put forth monstrous Claims. — Priestly Pretensions to 
be spurned. 

My dear Sir, — In my last letter I presented for 
your consideration the statement that Romanism is 
more a system of policy to retain and extend its pow- 
er than a religious system. Although a layman, and, 
from the nature of your profession, not deeply read in 
religious controversies, yet it must be quite apparent 
to you that Romanism, as a system, is greatly dis- 
similar to the system of religion taught in the New 
Testament. Have you ever seen the Pope in Saint 
Peter's, or in the Sistine Chapel, at the mass ? If 
not, you have yet to see a farce, and the more laugh- 
able because of its mock solemnity. If you have, then 
let me ask you, do you think Christ was ever so dress- 
ed, or that he ever so acted ? Can you conceive of any 
thing at a farther remove from the simplicity of his 
character as portrayed by the Evangelists ? Have you 
seen the cardinals, with their scarlet carriages, scar- 
let robes, and scarlet skull-caps, going through their 
maneuvers in the Sistine ? Can you conceive that 
ever the Apostles condescended to act a part in such a 
scene of gorgeous buffoonery ? You perhaps occasion- 
ally visit the cathedral of the city of your residence ; 



S6 kirwan's letters. 

Romanism not Chiistianity. Its despotism. 

have you the least conception that Grod was so wor- 
shiped by apostles, or ministers, or congregations, in 
the first age or ages of Christianity ? Where, in those 
days, could they light up their wax candles, or pack 
away their crooks and their crosiers, or carry their 
vestments, or burn their incense ? A careful compari- 
son, in this way, of Romanism and Christianity, must 
convince a mind disciplined as is yours that there is 
scarcely a semblance of relationship between them. 
Whence, then, is Romanism, as a system of policy ? 
Regarded as a religious system, it is a mixture of Pa- 
ganism, Judaism, and Christianity ; as a system to 
sustain, and perpetuate, and extend its power, it is a 
mixture of the various political elements which have 
risen in the world for governing and grinding the peo- 
ple and nations. 

As a system of policy, it has in it a strong element 
of despotism. This is common to it with all false 
systems. The external arrangement called '^ the body 
of the Church" is simply this : Christ appointed apos- 
tles—over these he placed Peter as Pope — to these and 
their successors he committed the government of the 
Church in all ages and countries, and the power of the 
keys to bind or to loose, a% they deemed proper. And 
in virtue of his being the vicar of Jesus Christ, the 
Pope claims supreme authority over things temporal 
as well as spiritual. Here is despotism, not as a doc- 
trine of expediency, not as established by the sword, 
but as set up by the sanction of Heaven itself, and as 
clothed with divine authority. You, Sir, need not be 
informed how fully, in past ages, the Pope has acted 
the despot ; nor how fully he acts it now, where he 



LETTERS. 37 



Modeled after the Roman state. 



can, nor how fully he would act it over us all, if he 
could ! 

Again ; as a system of policy, in its external arrange- 
ment it is modeled after the old Roman state. The 
emperors were elective, so is the Pope. Until the trans- 
fer of the seat of empire by Gonstantine to Byzantium, 
the emperor reigned in Rome ; there reigns the Pope. 
When elected, the emperor was the fountain of all au- 
thority ; so is the Pope. In all the countries which lay 
under the shadow of his sceptre, the emperor had his 
subordinates, and these again theirs, down to the low- 
est office in the state ; so has the Pope. Cardinals, 
archbishops, bishops, priests, deacons, canons, monks, 
friars, are but the higher and lower constabulary of the 
Pope, through which he seeks to collect into his own 
hands the reins of universal government, and to hold 
in allegiance the nations to Papal, as the Caesars held 
them to Pagan Rome. There can not be a doubt but 
that the Roman state was the model after which, in its 
main features, wily ecclesiastics modeled the Roman 
Church. When CsBsar retired to the Bosphorus, the Pope 
wisely preferred to remain on the Tiber ; and as, by the 
progress of the consumption which led to the dissolu- 
tion of the Roman empire, the reins, one after the other, 
fell from the hands of the weak successors of Constan- 
tine, the Pope was very careful to collect them into his 
own ; and thus, by slow but sure stages, he grew up 
to the possession of an authority more extended and 
powerful than emperor ever wielded, and in the exer- 
cise of which he converted emperors into his waiters 
and grooms. Need I, Sir, run the parallel farther ? 
The likeness is as striking as is that of the pictures of 



38 , KIR WAN'S LETTERS. 

Likeness of the Popes. Feudal system, 

the Popes in the Vatican to one another. There is not 
only a family likeness among them, but it would seem 
as if they Avere all sons of the same parents, born in the 
same age, and of the same size, and as if all of them 
were equally healthy and burly. As they look down 
upon you from the walls of " S. Paolo extra muros,'' 
each looks as if he were a twin-brother to the other ; 
nor do any of them look as if upon their shoulders was 
laid the weight of all the churches. Any of them might 
be mistaken for a likeness of the man who was clothed 
in purple and fine linen, and w^ho fared sumptuously 
every day. 

Again ; it possesses a very strong dash of the old 
feudal system. As a frame-work of policy, Romanism 
is not the work of an age or a century. From age to 
age, it has sought to incorporate w^ith itself the strong 
elements of other systems, that by tw^ining and twisting 
them together, it might increase its power. Now, Sir, 
that you may see how much of the feudal it has ap- 
propriated, permit me to ask you to read again, as I 
have no doubt you have read them once, the chapters 
of Hallam on the Feudal System of the Middle Ages, 
or the remarks of Robertson on it, in his Introduction 
to the History of Charles V. As self-defense ^vas the 
chief care of kings and conquerors, they parceled out 
countries among their chief followers on the condition 
that they should appear in arms w^hen required. Per- 
sons receiving land were to contribute men and means 
in the proportion of their grants. These chief men made 
grants, on similar conditions, to others ; and these, 
again, to others, down to the lowest subdivision. And 
thus, by grants and conditions, the different classes of 



39 

Its strong elements incorporated. 

society were bound to the next highest, and, through 
the chief nobles, were hound to the king or conqueror. 
And in the proportion of their possessions, each were 
bound to contribute for the mutual defense to the power 
above theni. Each was bound to gird on his sword at 
the command of his superior. It was at this tim.e, also, 
that the custom sprang up of nobles dropping their own 
name and taking that of their estates, which is yet in 
existence. This system had its strong and its weak 
points. The weakest point was the absence of a cen- 
tral power to balance and regulate the monarchical and 
the aristocratic parts ; and for the want of which the 
whole system fell into confusion. From this system, 
Romanism selected and appropriated its strong features, 
and supplied the great central, regulating power which 
it wanted, as any intelligent mind can see in a moment. 
The Pope is a king ; by feudal tenures he parcels out 
the Papal world among his archbishops and bishops ; 
and these, again, among their subordinates. Cardinals, 
archbishops, and bishops swear to him allegiance, and 
their subordinates to them. And when the head of this 
system is in a strait, he has only to apply to his chief 
vassals, and they pass the word to the next below, and 
these, again, to their inferiors ; and soon the Papal world 
is in motion to supply the requisite assistance. Thus 
it was in the Papal wars — ^thus it was recently in the 
collection of the Peter-pence, to sustain a weak and 
profligate set of priests when scheming and chamber- 
ing in Graeta. And see the way and manner in which 
priests, when made bishops, drop the names which their 
fathers gave them, as if ashamed of them, and assume 
the name of the territory over which their king has 



40 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

A monstrous fabrication. Divine claims. 

given them jurisdiction, as a farther evidence of this 
feudalism. England has its " Nicholas of AVestmin- 
ster" — we have our " John of New York" — and you, 
ere this, have your Patrick of Baltunore ; while in old, 
dilapidated Rome, a clever and good-looking old gen- 
tleman, who is far more a prisoner than a king, and 
much more of a puppet in the hands of his cardinals 
than an independent ruler, is acting the universal bish- 
op under the sobriquet of Pio Nono. 

All this. Sir, is to suggest a true analysis of ''the ex- 
ternal arrangement," as our friend of New York would 
say, which is known as the Romish Church. Take 
away from it all its despotism, all that it borrowed 
from the Roman state when governed by emperors, and 
all that it appropriated from the feudal system, which so 
widely obtained in Europe from the seventh to the elev- 
enth centuries, and what is there left? Not enough 
to command the respect of an Alpine cretin, save what 
it holds in common with Protestants. 

And yet, Sfr, this compound of various political ele- 
ments, cemented together by the priestcraft and cun- 
ning of ages, is " the external arrangement" which Pa- 
pal priests would palm on the world as the Church of 
Grod, founded on the apostles and prophets, and forti- 
fied by divine sanctions, and out of which there is no 
salvation ! Can you conceive of a more monstrous fab- 
rication ? 

Permit me, Sir, also to remind you of the fact that 
this thing of dealing out damnation to the nonrecipi- 
ents of theories is always an accompaniment of grand 
delusions. The claim of divine authority for priestly 
nonsense and fabrications is no new thins^ under the 



LETTERS. 41 



Duty of laymen. Need of patience. 

sun. It is put forth as boldly by Pagan as by Papal 
priests, and is asserted as impudently in Stamboul as 
in Rome. You know it is death by law, and without 
benefit of clergy, for a Mohammedan to become a Chris- 
tian while residing under the shadow of the crescent, 
and that Paganism thunders its excommunications 
against all who abandon its superstitious rites. The 
foundation of all this lies in the inherent weakness of 
the theories put forward, and of the claims asserted ; 
and the object is to quell scrutiny, and to induce faith 
by authority and by fear. God is the Father of us all ; 
and Jesus Christ is the Savior of all who believe upon 
him ; and how preposterous for Pagan, Papal, Protest- 
ant, or Mohammedan priest to cut us off from the grace 
and love of our heavenly Father because we deny their 
claims, discard their rites, and refuse to submit to their 
manipulations ! Sir, the intelligent laymen of this land, 
and of all lands, should seek fully to comprehend the 
great interests of humanity involved in these priestly 
pretensions ; and while rejecting them themselves, they 
should see to it that the most ignorant of the people 
should not be deluded by our swarming, imported, and 
ghostly pretenders. For myself, when I meet with a 
man dressed in ecclesiastical livery, urging upon me 
or others theories of human device as to the external 
arrangements of the Church, and seeking to compel 
my belief in them with the threat of damnation if I 
reject them, I can scarcely resist the conviction that 
he is either a knave, or a fanatic, or a fool. And it 
sometimes requires a little more of the grace of pa- 
tience than I possess to forbear telling him so. 

With great respect, yours. 



42 

Romanism as a religious system. Naples. 



LETTER V. 

Romanism as a religious System. — Naples. — St. Paul Major a Type of 
the Paganism of Romanism. — Holy Water — how made. — Its Uses and 
Ends. — St. Anthony's Day. — The Origin of Holy Water. 

My dear Sir, — Hitherto I have only asked your at- 
tention to the ^'external arrangements" of Romanism, 
which is called ''the body of the Church." I have 
stated to you then* causes and their ingredients, and 
that these arrangements form a system of policy to sus- 
tain and extend the power and the dominion claimed by 
the priests. In its external form, Romanism bears no 
possible likeness to Christianity as it received its sim- 
ple habit from its glorious and glorified head. I shall 
now ask you to pass with me to the examination of Ro- 
manism as a religious system, premising that, in this 
respect also, we shall find it at an equal remove from 
Clnristianity, as we did its external form. 

It was on the morning of the twenty-eighth of May 
that the steamer Bosphorus came to anchor in the Bay 
of Naples. As the morning sun was shedding its first 
bright beams on the surrounding scenery, I opened the 
window of my state-room, and lo ! the summit of the 
fiery Vesuvius was smoking before me ! The desire of 
many a long year was gratified. Soon we aU debarked, 
and after locating myself in a quiet hotel facing the 
magnificent bay, and in a room from which I had a 
view of the harbor, its islands and surrounding mount- 



K I R W A N ' S L E T T E R S. 43 

Every thing new. St. Paul Major. A heathen temple. 

ains, I went forth with my friend and our valet to see 
sights. It was here that I first touched Italian soil, and 
that I first mingled with the people of Italy. Every 
thing struck me as new, strange, and peculiar. Such 
crowds of soldiers, priests, beggars, and donkeys I had 
never seen. In beauty of scenery, and in the squalid 
wretchedness of masses of the people, Naples stands 
pre-eminent. To the causes of this wretchedness I may 
allude hereafter. During the morning I made a visit 
to the Church of Saint Paul Major, which is one of 
the sights of this beautifully located, but misgoverned, 
priest-ridden, and degraded city. This is really the old 
temple of Castor and Pollux transformed into a church. 
There stand the old pillars of the heathen temple ; there, 
before the door, is the statue of a heathen god convert- 
ed into a statue of St. Paul : on either side of the great 
door, and over it, are left remaining the pictures of the 
heathen priests offering sacrifices, and all over the in- 
terior of the building are the representations of heathen 
mythology, mixed and mingled up with the representa- 
tions of the myths and superstitions of Popery. Priests 
in their robes were mumbling mass at its altars, wom- 
en and beggars were either kneeling before the altars 
and gazing around, or were pestering you for alms at 
every turn. And to a person at all acquainted with 
heathen mythology, with Roman antiquities, and with 
the way and manner of the worship of the old Italians, 
the conception, on entering this church, would be nei- 
ther violent nor unnatural that he was in a heathen 
temple, whose altars were surrounded by hen then 
priests, upon which they were offering their unmean- 
ing sacrifices. Such, Sir, was the strong impression 



44 

Paganism of Romanism. Holy water. How made. 

made upon my own mind as I walked around the old 
temple of Castor and Pollux, now called the Church 
of Saint Paul at Naples. And unless, Sir, you have 
already given it your attention, you will be amazed to 
find how largely Romanism has drawn upon Paganism 
in the formation of that compound which it calls Cath- 
olic Christianity. And to the Paganism of Romanism, 
as symbolized in that old temple of Castor and Pollux, 
I would respectfully ask your attention. 

On entering a Romish Church, the first thing that 
strikes you as peculiar is the stone or marble basin of 
holy ivater placed near the door, in which the more ig- 
norant and devout dip their fingers, and then, with their 
wet fingers, make upon themselves the sign of the cross. 
Holy water, you know, is a thing of universal use, and 
to which is ascribed wonderful potency in the Romish 
system. Have you. Sir, ever seen the farcical ceremony 
by which common water is made holy ? If not, permit 
me to describe it to you, as I have recently witnessed 
it myself. Connected with the Basilica of St. John 
Lateran at Rome is the baptistry said to have been 
built by Constantine in which to receive baptism from 
Pope Silvester. Every thing in Rom.e, you know, must 
have a history, or tradition of some kind ; and these are 
easily manufactured, if they do not truly exist. Learn- 
ing that there was to be a peculiar ceremony there of 
some kind, I sallied out on the morning of the 7th of 
June to witness it, in company with some friends. 
We entered the little gem of a building, and in its cen 
tre, beneath a cupola supported by columns, was a large 
antique urn, almost as large as a bathing tub, filled 
with water. Save a few ragged boys and beggars, my- 



K I R W A N ' S L E T T E R S. 45 



The ceremony described. 



self and friends were the only persons yet present. 
Soon the voice of melody was heard in the direction of 
the churchj which came from a bareheaded procession, 
dressed for the occasion, on its way to the baptistry. 
A sleepy bishop, that we had seen drowsing on former 
occasions, when boys were swinging their incense vases 
before him, brought up the rear, most gaudily dressed, 
and with an umbrella held over his head. Singing, 
they entered the chapel, and surrounded the urn. The 
bishop read a little — then all sang, and chanted. 
Thrice, at intervals, the bishop, with his hand, made the 
sign of the cross in the w ater, making quite a ruffle on 
its surface as he drew his hand through it ; thrice, at 
intervals, he breathed into the water, commanding it at 
each time to receive the Holy Grhost. Then, from a 
vessel like a coffee-pot, he poured oil into it in the form 
of a cross ; and from another similar vessel, at a brief 
interval, he poured some other liquid into the tub, again 
in the figure of a cross. At another interval he took 
both vessels by the handles in his right hand, and 
bringing their spouts near together, he poured into the 
tub a little stream in the form of a cross, formed by the 
liquids from both vessels uniting. A powder, some- 
thing like fine salt, was also cast into it. Then, after 
mixing up all together, he washed his hands in the com- 
pound, which were most reverently wiped by his at- 
tendants. Before putting them in the water, his hands 
were divested of their gloves and rings, and were most 
devoutly kissed ; as was his crook when taken by his 
attendants. Thus common was changed into holy wa- 
ter by one of the most silly and blasphemous ceremo- 
nies it was ever my lot to witness. After sprinkling 



46 KIR WAN's LETTER ^>. 



Meaning of holy water. Its uses. 

the faithful around, they retired to the church with 
procession and singing as they came, where mass was 
said, without any but the priests and their waiters to 
hear it. It was thus I saw holy water made in Rome. 
The supremely ridiculous and superstitious way in 
which it is ordinarily made, you may see in the closing 
chapter of Challoner's Catholic Christian Instructed, a 
monument to the credulity and folly of its author. 

While doctors differ as to the object and meaning of 
holy water, it is commonly regarded as a symbol of the 
purity with which we should approach God in worship. 
Grant this to be a good object, and an excuse for the 
thing, how can this explain its other applications ? It 
is sprinkled upon candles — ^upon palms on Palm- Sun- 
day — upon the garments of the living — ^upon the cof- 
fins of the dead — upon dogs, sheep, asses, mules, beds, 
houses, meat, bells, fortifications, and cannon. " Noth- 
ing," says Croly, " can be blessed or hallowed without 
it ; neither candles, nor new fruit, nor new-laid eggs. 
Even the butter-churn is sprinkled with it be- 
fore churning commences, that the cream may work 
the better. It purifies the air — heals distempers — 
cleanses the soul — expels Satan and his imps from 
haunted houses — and introduces the Holy Ghost as an 
inmate in their stead." And that you. Sir, may not 
esteem this an exaggeration, ponder the following state- 
ment affixed to the wall over the vessels of holy water 
in the Church of S. Carlo, in Rome. There' it is not 
under a curtain, like some of the miraculous pictures, 
but where every eye can see it. 

" The Church proposes holy water as a remedy and 
assistant in many circumstances, both spiritual and cor- 



LETTERS. 47 



Spiritual and corporeal. St. Anthony. 

poreal, but especially in these following. Its spiritual 
uses are : 

^'1. It drives away devils from places and persons. 

"2. It affords assistance against fears and diabolical 
illusions. 

" 3. It cancels venial sins. 

'' 4. It imparts strength to resist temptations. 

'^ 5. It drives away wicked thoughts. 

'^6. It preserves safely from the passing snares of 
the devil. 

"7. It obtains the favor and presence of the Holy 
Grhost. 

" Its corporeal uses are : 

" 1. It is a remedy against barrenness, both in wom- 
en and beasts. 

"2, It is a preservative from sickness. 

'^3. It heals the infirmities of the mind and body. 

''4c. It purifies infected air, and drives away plague 
and contagion." 

This is the substance, though not a literal or full 
translation of the document. Must not. Sir, the com- 
mon-sense, equally with the religious sentiment of the 
world, brand all this as a vile and wicked imposition ? 

But this is not the worst or lowest use of holy water. 
You have heard, no doubt, of the good Saint Anthony, 
of blessed memory. He was a rare personage, and his 
festival is on the 17th of January. Balacius, king of 
Egypt, when persecuting the Christians, was exhorted 
by this saint to permit Grod's people to live in peace. 
The king tore the letter in pieces, and resolved to make 
Anthony his next victim. Five days after, when riding 
out, his remarkably tame horse threw him to the earth, 



48 KIRWAN's LETTERS. 

Horses sprinkled. Holy water a heathen rite. 

and then turning round, bit and tore his thigh so ter- 
ribly that he died in three days. From this, or some 
other legend equally veracious, Anthony is made the 
patron saint of horses, and they have gotten up in Rome 
the blessing of horses on Saint Anthony's day, and this 
is done by sprinkling them with holy water. On that 
day, the horses, mules, and donkeys of the city of Rome 
and of the surrounding country, gayly dressed, are pa- 
raded before the church of this saint, where a priest 
takes them under the care of holy Saint Anthony, and 
then sprinkles them with holy water, receiving some 
small remuneration for each horse, mule, or donkey 
which he thus purifies. And the poor people of Rome 
are made to believe that, unless their horses, mules, and 
donkeys are thus besprinkled with holy water, they will 
stumble, or fall, or die, or receive some serious injury 
thi'ough the year ! These, Sir, are some of the various 
uses and benefits of holy water ! Is it possible to con- 
ceive of impositions more barefaced or dishonest ! And 
all this is under the eye of the Pope, who patronizes 
the iniquity by yearly sending his own horses for a 
sprinkling ! 

And the question arises, Whence this custom, so 
wicked, so foolish ? There are no traces of it in the 
Bible ; there is scarcely a pretension to this by Papal 
doctors. It is purely a heathen custom, transferred by 
the priests from heathenism into the Church for the 
purpose of facilitating the passing over of the heathen 
from Paganism to Popery. What was at first a mat- 
ter of policy became soon a matter of faith ; and now 
a font of holy water is of far more importance to the 
complete finish of a Romish church than the Bible. 



LETTERS. 49 



Dr. Middleton's letter. A Pagan rite for gain. 

Indeed, while the Bible is supplanted by the Mass-book 
and the Missal, the font of holy water is never absent. 
Your own acquaintance. Sir, with classic literature and 
heathen mythology vfill supply you with the proofs 
which establish the Pagan origin of holy water. And 
if you have not time to look them up, I would refer 
you, for some of them, to " Dr. Middleton's Letter from 
Rome." 

You, Sir, know how much is made of holy water in 
the Church with which you hold a nominal connection. 
Its origin, beyond all question, is Pagan, and is so ad- 
mitted by some Papal waiters. And as I have seen 
priests in Ireland passing through crowded chapels, fol- 
lowed by boys bearing a tub of water, in which he ever 
and anon dipped a big brush and scattered it over the 
people — as, in the Madeleine, in Paris, I saw an old 
monk standing by the door in the railing which fences 
out some and fences in others, holding a brush wet with 
holy water in his hand, that the polite Parisians might 
touch it with their fingers — as I saw the thing manu- 
factured by tubs-full in Rome, and by the priests of St. 
John Lateran, the holiest church in the world, " Eccle- 
sia urbis et orbis, mater et caput ecclesiarum," I could 
not help thinking that, so far forth, these Papal were 
Pagan priests, practicing a Pagan rite, and for no other 
motive but the gain which it brought them. 

I shall return to the Paganism of Romanism in my 
next. 

With great respect, yours. 
C 



50 kirwan's letters. 

The Sistine. Its appearance. 



LETTER VI. 

The Sistine Chapel. — Angelo's Painting. — The Artist's Reply. — In- 
cense. — Its Pagan Origin. — Candles: their Use, End, and Origin. — 
Candlemass in Rome. — The Light of Candles can not supply the Light 
of Truth. 

My dear Sir, — As I promised you at the close of my 
last epistle, I return again to the examination of the 
Paganism of Eomanism. I have aheady shown you 
that holy water ^ both as to its origin, and as to its 
multifarious and ridiculous uses, is of Pagan origin. 
Let me now ask your attention to other things, form- 
ing at all times and places essential components of the 
Romish service. 

As I entered the Sistine Chapel at Rome, so famed 
in the annals of art, I was strangely overwhelmed with 
a feeling of disappointment. It is an oblong and lofty 
room, about thrice the length of its width, and divided 
by a low railing into three compartments. In the 
most distant of these compartments, as you enter, is 
the altar, and the Pope's chair ; and around it are 
benches for the cardinals. The middle compartment 
is entirely vacant, with nothing but standing-places 
for the spectators ; the outer one has some plain bench- 
es, and is appropriated to the ladies during the hours 
of worship. As there was no person there save the 
door-keeper, and a painter who was transferring to his 
canvas the pictures on the walls, I walked leisurely 



LETTERS. 51 



Angelo's" picture. Artist's reply. St. Gudule. 

round, and without any let or hinderance. Angelo's 
great fresco of the Judgment, sixty hy thirty feet, 
and so long the wonder of art, was before me. I gazed 
upon it from various points to get a clear view of it, 
hut in vain. I borrowed the magnifying-glass of the 
painter, and gazed through that, but yet in vain. 
''What," said I to the painter, ''is the matter with 
these paintings ? Is it the fault of the light that I 
can not see them clearly ? or have the colors faded ?" 
" No," said he ; " it is the effect of that ridiculous in- 
cense which they burn here at mass ;" and he uttered 
the sentiment with a tone and manner which showed 
that he, at least, was incensed by the frivolous, but 
yet, to the paintings of Angelo, injurious ceremonial. 
And if the cause assigned was the true one, I felt, at 
the moment, as if every incense vase in Rome should 
be cast into the muddy Tiber ; nor do I yet feel that, 
by committing such an act, any man would burden 
his soul with the sin of sacrilege. I witnessed mass 
afterward in the Sistine, and saw clouds of incense 
rise and spread themselves all around, and thick 
enough to set weak lungs a coughing. The last scene 
of this kind that I witnessed was in St. Grudule, the 
cathedral at Brussels. It was on a fine Sabbath morn- 
ing in June, when the feast of some saint brought a 
large number of clergy and several bishops together. 
The latter were more richly decorated than any I had 
previously seen. When the time for offering incense 
arrived, a short but exceedingly fat man came to the 
bishops with his censer. So rotund was he, that it 
seemed as if he could roll as easily as walk ; and his 
efforts to go from one bishop to another, and then his 



52 KIRWAN^S LETTERS. 

Incense. An emblem. 

efforts to get round his enormous belly, so as to give 
the censer the ceremonial swing, made it as ludicrous 
and lauofhahle as it is a senseless and superstitious 
ceremony. 

In the matter of incense, Sir, you well know that 
papal priests are very prodigal. You have to smell it, 
and breathe it, in all their chapels ; and it seems to me 
that the priests would be adding something, at least, to 
the comfort of the faithful if they would somehow con- 
trive to make it a little more agreeable to the sense of 
smell, which it is very pleasant to have occasionally 
consulted. You enter a Romish church to witness the 
mass: at a certain point a boy, dressed in white, ap- 
pears vdth a vessel — ^the priest puts something in it, 
and it immediately commences to smoke. The priest 
takes it and throws it up to the altar, and to the cruci- 
fix ; the boy then takes it and thi'ows it up before the 
priest, and other persons and things. And before the 
ceremony is ended, the smoke, or, as it is called, the 
incense, fills the house. This, we are taught, is '^ an 
emblem of prayer ascending to G-od from a heart in- 
flamed with his love." But whence this custom ? Not 
from Christ— -not fi'om his apostles — not a command 
or allusion to it in the New Testament. Not a thino- 
sufficient to sanction it even in the typical economy of 
the Jews. And if an emblem of prayer, why not offer 
the prayer and drop the emblem ? The whole thing, 
Sir, is transferred bodily from Paganism, as any person 
informed about Pagan ceremonies must know. Incense 
was always offered to the gods fi-om Pagan altars, and, 
as we may learn from the sculpture and pictures wliich 
have come down to our day, very much in the manner 



'S LETTERS. 53 



Purely Pagan. Candles. Vestal Virgins. 

in which it is now offered in Romish churches — ^by a 
boy in white robes, with a censer in his hand. And 
had an old worshiper of Castor and Pollux risen from 
the catacombs and entered with me the Church of St. 
Paul Major at Naples, he would have felt that, although 
great revolutions had taken place in other things, his 
old temple and its worship were yet mainly the same. 
There, at least, were the holy water and the smoking 
incense, just as he had left them. 

Another prominent peculiarity of the Romish service 
is the use of candles. These are seen burning on all 
their altars, in greater or less profusion, according to 
the eclat of the occasion, or of the saint or sinner on 
whose feast-day mass is offered. I have seen them 
burning on the chief altar of San Carlo in the Corso, 
in numbers beyond my computation, standing at about 
the centre of the gorgeous edifice ; and I have seen them 
reduced to about half a dozen on the altar of the Sis- 
tine, when the Pope and his cardinals were bowing be- 
fore it. I have seen them. Sir, in your cathedral at 
Baltimore, on Christmas day, as thick and countless as 
trees in a nursery ; and the tomb of Peter, under the 
great cupola of Saint Peter's Church, is perpetually 
lighted by one hundred and twelve lamps, disposed 
round a circular balustrade. These lamps never go 
out ; forcibly recalling to the intelligent mind the lights 
kept perpetually burning on the Pagan altars in Rome, 
by the Yestal Virgins. You, Sir, will not forget what 
you learned in your schoolboy days on that subject ; 
but, should you have done so, you can easily refresh 
your memory by referring to your ^' Roman Antiqui- 
ties." 



54 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

Bishop England. Frank confession. 

But what mean, and whence, these lighted candles ? 
Hear what Bishop England — in his day a clever man, 
and an excellent judge of Irish whiskey — says in reply : 
'' Lights are placed on the altar from the usage of the 
most ancient times. It is an Eastern custom to ex- 
press joy ; for, even in the light of the sun, the torches 
and candles were lighted to manifest this feeling ; and, 
as our religion is received from the East, most of our 
ancient customs are of Eastern origin,^^ Here is the 
whole thing confessed by a Romish bishop, with whom, 
no doubt. Sir, you were acquainted, and who flourished 
his crook and his crosier in the city of Charleston. 
The Pagans of the East expressed their joy by lighted 
torches and candles ; and, as Romanists received their 
religion from the East, they adopted this among other 
Eastern customs ! 

In our own happy America, where we have learned 
how to express our joy without lighting lamps or can- 
dles, we have scarcely any idea of the extent to which 
they are used in Papal countries. With us they are 
used whenever mass is said, or extreme unction is ad- 
ministered, or any service is performed at the altar or 
chapel. In Rome, and the countries of Italy, they are 
used not merely in these ways, but in all w^ays. I 
have seen them burning on an altar in the catacombs 
of Naples — ^before images of the Virgin at the corners 
of the streets, in whiskey-shops, and by the way-side — 
in the gorgeous processions of carrying the Host to some 
dying person — at funeral processions. Neither the 
light of the mioon and stars by night, nor of the glori- 
ous sun by day, is sufficient to express the joy of a Ro- 
manist ; their light must be increased by that of a few 



55 

Candlemass. How kept in Rome. 

lamps or candles in order to obtain their object and to 
give vent to their feelings ! 

To be sure, the silliness of the whole thing should 
save it from this sifting ; but as the origin of the mat- 
ter is confessed, and these candles form a part of a sys- 
tem addressed to the senses, let us not yet put them 
out. You know there is an old feast called C-a-n-d-1-e- 
m-a-s-s, so called from the number of lighted candles 
used in the procession of the day, and from the custom 
of consecrating candles on that day for the rest of the 
year. Have you. Sir, ever seen that procession, or wit- 
nessed that blessing of candles ? In Rome it is one 
of the most gorgeous festivals of the year. Sitting in 
his chair of state, the Pope is borne on the shoulders 
of eight men into Saint Peter's, attended by huge fans 
made of ostrich feathers, with the eyes of the peacock's 
tail, and by cardinals, bishops, prelates, and priests. 
When every thing is fixed for the senseless ceremony, 
candles are brought to him in immense numbers. 
They are incensed, sprinkled with holy water, and 
blessed. Then they are distributed. Each cardinal 
approaches, receives a candle, kisses the Pope's hand^ 
and retires. Each bishop approaches, receives a can- 
dle, kisses the Pope's knee^ and retires. Each inferior 
functionary on the occasion approaches, receives a can- 
dle, kisses the Pope's foot^ and retires. On a sudden 
an immense number of candles are lighted, in the blaze 
of which the Pope is carried round the church, and re- 
tires, granting an indulgence of thirty years to all the 
faithful present ! This, Sir, is Candlemass at Rome ! 
And if you. Sir, or I, or any body else, wish an indul- 
gence to cover all the years of our sojourn here, wo 



56 kirwan's letters. 

Candles of Pagan origin. 

need only attend the feast of Candlemass at Saint Pe- 
ter's thrice ; for three times thirty years make ninety ; 
and beyond ninety years we will not probably need in- 
dulgence, save from our heirs or our nurses. 

As, beyond all possibility, this can not be Christian 
rite, whence is it ? Bishop England says it is of East- 
ern origin ; every body acquainted with mythology must 
confess that it is Pagan. In heathen temples lamps 
and candles were ever burning on the altars, and be- 
fore the statues of their deities. Donations of lamps 
and candlesticks were often made to temples and dei- 
ties. The use of candles in Pagan feasts and proces- 
sions is first traced to the Egyptians, who had their 
yearly festival of ''the lighting of candles," some- 
what similar to that in Rome, in which the Pope acts so 
conspicuous a part. And some of the Christian fathers 
thus ridiculed the heathen ; ''they light up candles to 
Grod as if he lived in the dark ; but do they not deserve 
to be called madmen who offer lamps to the Author 
and Griver of light?" The whole thing. Sir, is ridicu- 
lous, and is transferred bodily and confessedly from 
Paganism. There is nothing in the Christian Scrip- 
tures to countenance it. And should some Pagan Ro- 
man come forth from the catacombs, as did Lazarus 
from the grave, at the bidding of Him who is the res- 
urrection and the life, he would see in the lamps and 
candles which burn in all its temples an evidence that 
the religion of his fathers was yet there unchanged. 0, 
Sir, it is the entrance of Grod's truth into the mind that 
gives light ; without this light we may stand amid the 
concentrated blaze of all the lamps and candtes that 
ever burned on Papal or Pagan altars, and yet be in 



kirwan's letters. 57 

Truth is the hght of the world. 

Egyptian darkness. The oil of all the whales that 
swim, the tallow of the cattle upon a thousand hills, 
the wax of all the bees that have ever buzzed, if man- 
ufactured into candles, and blessed by the Pope, would 
not shed as much light upon the mind as would this 
one simple text, '^He that believeth in the Son hath 
life" — or this other text, " Then spoke Jesus unto them, 
saying, I am the light of the world ; he that followeth 
me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light 
of life." 0, why should miserable priests attempt the 
fraud of supplying the light of the truth which they 
suppress by the light of candles ? 

I am not yet through with the Paganism of Roman- 
ism. I shall return to it in my next. 

With great respect, yours. 



58 

SL Patrick. No holy places. 



LETTER VII. 

St. Patrick never in America. — Our Poverty in Holy Wells and Places. 
— The Holy Wells at Ballaliadireen — Ballina — Downpatrick Head. 
—Their Origin.— The Cell of St. Mary in Via Lata.— The Atrocity 
of opening fabulous Wells, and suppressing the Fountains of Truth. 

My dear Sir, — I am not yet through with the Pagan- 
ism of Romanism ; and I will ask your attention in the 
present letter to some other evidences in proof of their 
great similarity. In the mean time, I wish you not to 
forget what I have said about the uses of holy water, 
incense, and candles. 

As good old Saint Patrick, of blessed memory, never 
visited these American shores ; and as, in the days of 
monkish miracles and legends, and of holy houses flying 
through the air, they lay beyond the light of the Dark 
Ages, we are very sadly deficient in holy wells, at which 
the wondering saints drank, or in which they washed 
their feet, and in holy places, where miracles were 
wrought when none were needed, to gratify their whims 
or their appetites, or to strike with fear their enemies. 
And may not this, Sir, be one of the reasons why Ro- 
manism flourishes so little here, and why so many ed- 
ucated in that faith, in other lands, on reaching these 
shores, lay it aside as a compound of old wives' fables ? 
"Whatever may be the cause of the effect, whether it be 
our poverty in holy wells and places, or our open and 
ennobling institutions, it would really seem, especially 



LETTERS. 59 



Holy wells. That at Ballahadireen. 

as to our emigrants from Ireland, that they carry their 
Popery in the pockets of their corduroys ; for as soon 
as they lay aside the one, they seem to get rid of the 
other. But if we a.re poor in holy wells and places, 
they abound in those lands where Romanism yet reigns 
and rules. 

In some letters addressed, not long ago, to our mag- 
nificent friend of New York, I had occasion to advert 
to these holy wells. I described one that I had seen 
in my boyhood. Knowing how to shoot a gun round 
a corner to the entire satisfaction of many of the faith- 
ful, he sought to throw discredit upon the whole state- 
ment. He knew and knows that they exist in almost 
every county of Ireland ; but he was ashamed to own 
them, and afraid to denounce them, lest he should break 
their charm over the vulgar mind. Now, Sir, as I have 
recently made a pilgrimage to some of these holy wells, 
permit me to describe a few of them to you, and of the 
least celebrated. 

Near to a small town called Ballahadireen, in the 
county Mayo, is a holy well of some female saint, whose 
name I forget, and whose festival is on the 10th of 
August. On the 13th of last July I was all around it. 
It stands in a secluded spot, and is surrounded by a 
very rough wall of stones, upon some of which are cut 
Popish hieroglyphics in the most primitive style of the 
art. I found old rags between the stones in place of 
mortar ; and in lifting up some stones, I found knots 
of thread under them ; and upon the branches of the 
little shrubbery by which it was surrounded, there were 
tied pieces of old cloth. These were left behind as me- 
mentoes of their visits by the poor devotees, who go thero 



60 

Well at Balljna. Holy trout. 

to make their stations ; that is, to go round it upon 
their knees, praying to the saintess of the well for her 
intercessions. Miss H., the nohle and pious sister of 
the proprietor of the place, told me that she saw one 
day a woman at this well pull the hair from her head, 
and tie it to a bush on its side. ''Why," said she to 
the woman, " do you do so ?" Her reply was, " If Grod 
will overlook me in the judgment, holy Saint Patrick 
will look on this hair and remember me, and will speak 
to God for me." If Irish Popery is true, heaven is no 
place of rest to good Saint Patrick. He has his own 
troubles there. The feast of this saintess is kept on 
the 10th, and there is a great carousal on the 11th of 
August ; and within a few years three awful murders 
have occurred at these carousals. So I was informed 
on the spot. 

Another of these holy wells is near to Ballina, in Con- 
naught, and on the side of the public highway. This 
is one of the many called after Saint Patrick, whose 
fame is very great for many wonderful things in /'the 
Island of Saints." It is surrounded with mud, which 
was so deep on the 15th of July as to prevent me from 
reaching its brink ; and through that mud all the poor 
devotees wade in making their stations. After making 
the required prayers around the well, they cross the 
road, and pass over a stone wall into a field, in which 
is a rock. They walk round this rock praying, drop- 
ping at each circuit a little stone upon it. "When the 
required circuits are all made, they return to the w^ell, 
and gaze into its shallow waters until they see the 
holy trout, whose appearance is an evidence that their 
prayers are answered ! The well-known Dr. John Ed- 



LETTERS. 61 



Priests fishing. Well at Downpatrick. 

gar, of Belfast, one of Ireland's noblest sons, was with 
me on this pilgrimage. He stated that he saw once a 
pilgrim at this w^ell watching for " the holy trout," 
that he might have an evidence of the acceptance of 
his prayers. Of a sudden he exclaimed, with astonish- 
ing emotion, " I see the holy eel!" But, on examina- 
tion, it was found that ^^the holy eel" was only a long, 
rotten twig, thrown by some wag into the well. And 
as I passed from this holy well through the town, I 
saw half a dozen of lazy and carnal-looking priests fish- 
ing for salmon in the River Moy, which passes through 
it. I felt for the moment as if I should like to have 
seen them at least knee-deep, if no further, in the mud 
which surrounded the well in which the victim of their 
cruel superstition saw " the holy eel." 

I visited, also, the holy well, and drank of its waters, 
which springs up in the moor as you approach Down- 
patrick Head. There were the beaten paths of the pil- 
grims, along which they perform their stations ; and 
there were the old rags stuffed in between the stones ; 
and I learned by our guides that hundreds flock to it 
on the day when prayers oflered there have a peculiar 
efficacy. But what need, Sir, of dwelling longer on 
these wells ? If slippery John of New York, whose 
memory is often very conveniently treacherous, knows 
nothing about them, there are millions who do. Who 
has not heard or read of the famous well of Saint Pat- 
rick, in the county Down ? Who is ignorant of Saint 
John's well, at Kilmainham, or of the superstitious rites 
and licentious practices which are exhibited there on 
the 24th of June ? These sacred wells, places, and 
spots you meet every where in Papal countries. In 



62 



LETTERS. 



St. Maria in Via Lata. Pillar and chain. 

Italy they abound. Down in a dark cellar, under the 
church " St. Maria in Via Lata," I was shown the holy 
well, by a burly priest, which miraculously sprung 
up for the baptism of those converted by St. Paul. And 
there is scarcely a hill, vale, river, spring, road, church, 
or village that you meet, which has not its sacred his- 
tory, and to which somebody does not make a pilgrim- 
age in order to obtain the remission of sin. 

And whence, Sir, all this reverence for holy wells 
and holy places ? Surely not from the Bible ; surely 
not from the teachings of Christ and his apostles. 
Whence, then, are these superstitious customs de- 
rived ? Most certainly and obviously from Paganism. 
You, Sir, will not need me to tell you how frequent 
among the heathen were sacred fountains, and rivers, 
and lakes, and places. You well know to what an ex- 
tent, at this day, are pilgrimages to holy places and riv- 
ers made by the Hindoos, and the votaries of Bhood- 
ism over all the East. This, also, in the language of 
Bishop England, is ^'an ancient custom, of Eastern or- 
igin," and adopted because " our religion has been re- 
ceived from the East." 

As I gazed around that cell, imder the Church of 
Saint Maria in Via Lata in Rome, in which the mirac- 
ulous well of Saint Paul is kept locked and covered 
up, and which is only opened once a year to quench the 
thirst of the faithful, my eye lit upon a pillar extend- 
ing almost to the ceiling of the cell, around which a 
chain was entwined. " What chain and pillar are 
these ?" said I to our priestly guide. " 0," said he, 
" that is the pillar to which Paul was bound, and that 
is the very chain by which he was bound." I smiled 



LETTERS. 63 



Wonderful sentence. Other fountains. 

but was silent, as I did not care to confess my unbe- 
lief down there. I did not go to Rome desirous to ob- 
tain a martyr's crown from or by priestly hands. I ap- 
proached the pillar, and found this sentence deeply chis- 
eled into it, " Verbum Dei non est alligatum^^ — the 
Word of G-od is not bound. I was amazed. There, 
down in that dark, damp cellar, was engraved upon 
stone the glorious truth that Grod's Word is not bound, 
and yet, when you go up into the light, you find the 
Word of G-od not only bound, but banished from Rome. 
" There were other fountains," said a friend to our 
guide, ''which sprung up here; what is become of 
them ?" " What were they ?" said he. " The fount- 
ains called Paul's Epistle to the G-alatians, and Paul's 
Epistle to the Ephesians, and Paul's Epistle to the 
Philippians, and Paul's Epistle to the Colossians, and 
Paul's Epistle to Philemon, and probably Paul's Epis- 
tle to the Hebrews," was the reply. '' These were 
great fountains which sprung up here at the time you 
say this holy w^ell did, and where are they ?" He re- 
plied, with a shrug of the shoulder, " I don't know." 
And, although a shorn priest, I suppose he did not know. 
Now, Sir, how can we estimate the atrocity of that 
outrageous system of priestly policy which hides from 
the people the fountains of truth, and the truth by 
which we are converted and sanctified, and then sends 
them to rivers, fountains, or old muddy wells, at which 
some fabulous saints are said to have drank, or to have 
washed their clothes or their feet, for that cleansing 
which faith in the blood of Christ alone can effect ? 
They shut up from the people the fountains of truth, 
the wells of salvation, and send them in crowds to per- 



64 kirwan's letters. 

No priests at holy wells. Heathen origin. 

form stations around these holy wells, and to pray to 
the saints to whom they are dedicated. I know not, 
Sir, how all this may impress you, but I confess that, 
with me, it places a Papal and Pagan priest on the 
same level, save that the Pagan is the most excusahle. 
You find. Sir, no priests making then stations around 
these wells. They never dirty their shoes around that 
at Ballina ; they have never been heard to repeat a 
paternoster around that at Ballahadireen ; they are rare 
as swallows in winter at those holy places to which they 
encourage the vulgar to go. Why is this ? As among 
the ancient Egyptians, the priests have a religion for 
the people and a religion for themselves. 

The ancient heathen believed, and all the heathen 
nations of the East now believe, that some places are 
peculiarly holy, and that a visit to them is greatly mer- 
itorious, tending to purify the soul, and to gain the fa- 
vor of the gods : Popery adopts from their mythology 
this very principle, and in its pilgrimages and penances 
we have an exact counterpart of those of the heathen 
in ancient and modern times. Are you not beginning 
to see that Romanism is far more Pagan than Chris- 
tian ; that it bears a nearer resemblance to the teach- 
ings of the Shaster than to those of the Scriptures ? 

Nor have I yet exhausted the Paganism of Roman- 
ism. More evidence to this point in my next. 

Yours, with great respect. 



65 

Many points of agreement. Market-place of Naples. 



LETTER VIII. 

The Market-place at Naples. — A ludicrous Disaster at its Gate. — Ima 
ges every where revered. — Church of St. Augustin. — Scene v^^itnessed 
there. — The Image of Peter at St. Peter's. — Worshiped by Pope and 
Cardinals. — The Pantheon : Scene there. — Rome, Pagan in Fact, 
Christian only in Name. 

My DEAR Sir, — I am not yet through with the Pa- 
ganism of Romanism. So manifold are the points in 
which they touch and blend, and so numerous are the 
institutions, rites, and ceremonies transferred bodily 
from the one to the other, that to exhaust the subject 
would require volumes ; but I am not going to write 
volumes. Yet that you, and the poor, degraded vic- 
tims of the system may see, as I see, that in many of 
its main features it is baptized Paganism, I have a few 
more things to adduce in order to strengthen my po- 
sition. In the mean time, let me ask you not to forget 
what I have said about holy water, incense, candles, 
and holy wells. 

There is in Naples a market held in a square called 
Marcenello, and so called, if our valet spoke the truth, 
which is not always to be taken for granted in Italy, 
from the name of a rebel against the government, who 
rose up from among the fishermen, and who, in this 
square, put to death, in a barbarous manner, many of 
the nobles. You enter this market-place by a gate- 
way, on one side of which I saw an image of the Vir- 



66 

Ludicrous scene. Devotion to pictures 

gin and Child inclosed in a glass case, with candles 
burning before it, and to which the peasants, as they 
passed out and in, always bowed the knee. In this 
gateway I witnessed a most ludicrous scene, which 
admirably illustrates the piety of the Neapolitans. On 
approaching the gate, a donkey, laden with vegetables, 
as I had never seen a donkey laden before, and driven 
by a brawny and boisterous master, stumbled, and 
cabbages, onions, and turnips were scattered around. 
The donkey recovered, and his enraged driver overtook 
him in the gateway, where foi^ some minutes I wit- 
nessed the farce of his bowing to the Virgin, and whip- 
ping the donkey, and swearing at him at the same 
time. The obvious distraction caused by his reverence 
for the Virgin and his rage at the ass was most divert- 
ing. And these pictures and images you see every 
where in purely Papal countries, and they are held in 
great reverence by the people. They superabound in 
Naples.' 

And they are to be found in all Popish churches. 
As you enter these churches, they strike a stranger as 
one of their great peculiarities. You see people kneel- 
ing and praying before them and to them. Never, on 
any occasion, have I seen a more profound reverence 
manifested than I have seen toward these pictures and 
images in the churches of Rome, and in the presence 
of swarming priests. And to multitudes of these pic- 
tures miraculous powers are attributed ; and healing 
from diseases is sought from their touch, and forgive- 
ness of sin from their worship. This statement may 
be denied in theory by the priest, but it is true to the 
letter in the practice of the people. And that you, 



LETTERS. 67 



Church of St. Augustin. A scene there. 

Sir, may be convinced of this, permit me to make a 
statement of a scene on which I gazed with my own 
eyes, and which may he daily witnessed in Rome. 

On the lovely Sabbath morning of the 8th of last 
June, I started in company with others for St. Peter's. 
We took in our way the Church of St. Augustin, famed 
for its fresco of Isaiah by Raphael. Near to the right 
entrance is the statue of the Virgin and Child by San- 
sovino, which, for reasons that I could not learn, is an 
object of special veneration. Both the Virgin and Child 
were most gorgeously robed, and were sparkling with 
brilliants, the munificent donations of the opulent. The 
church has three naves, and is supported by gigantic 
pillars, all of which were covered from top to bottom, 
and on all sides, with hearts made of different metals. 
Around the statue was a crowd of poor people, each in- 
tensely anxious to kiss the toe of the Virgin, and crowd- 
ing their way to gain their end. Mothers were there, 
holding up their infant children in their hands, and 
pushing them over the heads of others, that they might 
only touch the venerated image. The successful com- 
petitors for the holy kiss, sprinkled themselves with wa- 
ter, and, after abstracting a penny or a paul from their 
rags, and depositing it in a money-box just by the statue, 
they retired, with joy and pleasure beaming from their 
countenances. Priests in flocks were passing in and 
out, but they sought neither to kiss the Virgin's toe, nor 
to stay the idolatry of the people. And what meant 
those hearts which hung in thousands from the pillars 
and walls of the edifice ? They were the votive offer- 
ings of those who received benefit or cure from kissing 
the toe of the image made by Sansovino ! I heard, 



68 kirwan's letters. 

Dr. Duff. Image of St. Peter. 

subsequently. Dr. DufF portraying with burning elo- 
quence the idolatry of India, but no picture did he draw 
so gross or revolting as that which I witnessed, and 
which you may witness in the Church of St. Augustin, 
which lies within the hearing of a gunshot to the pal- 
ace of the Pope ! This is the church to which the poor 
in Rome do mostly resort. It lies in a crowded and 
dirty part of the city. 

We passed on to St. Peter's. Here are pictures and 
statuary beyond number. I shall now only ask your 
attention to the image of St. Peter. There it is in the 
great nave, near to the high altar, and just in the posi- 
tion to attract the eye of every visitor. It is a sitting 
figure, formed of bronze, and resting on a heavy marble 
pedestal. His face is such as you might expect from 
his character as depicted in the Scriptures, impulsive 
and stern ; his right hand is lifted as if in the act of 
blessing ; and in his left he holds two ponderous keys 
This statue is a great affair in Rome, and has its his- 
tory and its worshipers. Some say that, save the head 
and hands, it is the old Jupiter Tonans, with the thun- 
derbolts exchanged for the keys. I have scarcely a 
doubt but that it is so. And at stated times the Pope 
and his cardinals go to it in gorgeous procession, and 
render to it, as far as the external act is concerned, as 
profound a worship as ever did the old Romans under 
the name of Jupiter. I saw myself priests bowing be- 
fore it, kissing its toe, and rubbing it with their fore- 
heads. Indeed, by constant kissing and rubbing, sev- 
eral feet have been worn down ; and, as I can testify, 
the present one is dying of consumption. "While meas- 
uring its dimensions with my eye, and rubbing with 



kirwan's letter^. 69 

Holy images. Mary at Lucca. St. Dominic. 

my hand the wasting toes, and thinking of the priestly 
wickedness connected with the whole affair, I was told 
that our friend of New York, on his recent visit, pros- 
trated himself before it. If so, it is another evidence 
of his great fitness to wear the fillet made by withered 
nuns from the wool of holy sheep. 

W"e, Sir, away in this land of darkness, and, if a star 
at all in the ecclesiastical firmament, only a wander- 
ing star that will not obey the impulses of the sun, and 
that will not be attracted to the great centre of Cath- 
olic unity, are as poor in holy statues and paintings as 
we are in holy wells ; and very much for the same rea- 
son. But other countries are very rich in them. Have 
you not heard. Sir, of the holy image of the Virgin and 
Child in Lucca — ^how the shoulder of the image bled 
when struck by a furious man — and how the blood is 
preserved to this day, and is exhibited with great cere- 
mony to the faithful ? Are you — can you be ignorant 
of the image of St. Dominic, in Calabria, which was 
brought from Heaven by St. Catharine and Mary Mag- 
dalene, and which, as cardinals, bishops, and priests 
testify, has raised the dead, given eyes to the blind, 
and cured all diseases and infirmities ? It is yet visit- 
ed by swarms of pilgrims yearly. This St. Dominic, 
you will remember, was the father of that wonderfully 
human institution, the Inquisition, which your good 
archbishop so manfully vindicates in that erudite work 
on theology which he has so kindly dedicated to you. 
Have you not heard of the picture of Mary, painted by 
St. Luke, kept in a church near Florence, which is 
brought out in solemn procession in order to avert any 
calamity which may be feared as impending over F)or- 



70 

Shy of Protestants. The Pantheon. 

ence or Tuscany ? But, Sir, the time would fail me 
to tell you of the numhers beyond number scattered 
over Southern and Northern Italy, Spain, Portugal, 
France, Grermany, and Holland ; and which, even in 
our day, are regarded as possessing wondrous and heal- 
ing efficacy. Where there is a mixture of Protestants 
among the people, these things are kept behind the cur- 
tain, and are but secretly encouraged ; but where the 
people are unmixed Papists, they are openly patronized, 
and, in many cases, are of more value than mines of 
gold to the priests. I met these things every where in 
Italy — in churches, by the road-side, in market-places, 
at the corners of the streets, in cigar shops— -and, in 
multitudes of cases, I have seen the people offering to 
them, at least in appearance, the most profound wor- 
ship. 

If, Sir, you have not seen, you have surely read of 
the Pantheon, the most perfect and celebrated monu- 
ment of ancient Rome. Although built before the 
Christian era, there it yet stands, in all its original 
proportions, unaffected by the revolutions of two thou- . 
sand years. Although various are the interpretations 
given to its name, yet in this temple all the gods of the 
heathen were worshiped ; and, when new countries 
were conquered, their gods, or duplicates of them, were 
sent to this temple, that the people from those nations, 
visiting the then metropolis of the world, might have 
their accustomed images before which to bow. And 
for this purpose it was most admnably arranged. 

This gem of antiquity, originally built by Agrippa, 
the son-in-law of Augustus, and dedicated by him to 
Tupiter Ultor, Mars, Venus, and, as its name imports, 



KIR WAN's LETTERS. 71 

Heathen images remain. Whence images. 

to all the gods, was dedicated by Pope Boniface IV. 
to the Virgin Mary and all the saints. With this sin- 
gle change, it remained as it was. Mary took the place, 
perhaps, of Venus, and the saints of Jupiter, Mars, 
and the other heroic gods of the heathen. The old 
images remained, but with new names, and they were 
passed off upon the deluded populace as the veracious 
images of Christian heroes ! And as the heathen found 
there all their gods before which to bow, so now do 
Papists find there their favorite saints before which to 
pray. Several times did I stand beneath its beautiful 
dome, and witness the ceremonies at its several altars ; 
and, as I saw the few that resorted there looking for a 
few minutes around, and then filing to the right or left 
as they discerned the picture of their favorite saint, 
how could I resist the impression that it was yet in 
substance and form a heathen temple, or suppress the 
fear that it was so in fact ? I assure you, Sir, that 
I regarded the dirty and clumsy priests I saw there 
more as the priests of Jupiter than of Jesus, and the per- 
sons I saw worship there more as Pagans than Chris- 
tians. 

Now, Sir, the question again arises, and imperatively 
demands an answer. Whence these images — whether 
of the chisel or the pencil, the carpenter or mason — 
which every where crowd Papal churches, and which 
are multiplied to a surfeit in Papal countries, and which 
have so much to do with the genuflections, prostrations, 
prayers, and beads of ignorant Papists ; and, as in the 
case of the statue of St. Peter, even with those of the 
Pope himself, and his crimsoned cardinals ? Whence 
all this "^ Not, surely, from the Scriptures of the Old 



72 kirwan's letters. 

Not from the Scriptures. Other heathen temples. 

Testament, because we are taught nothing by them 
more clearly than that Grod, in his anger, visited the 
Jews with war, famine, pestilence, and dispersion, to 
punish them for the sin of setting up images after 
the manner of the heathen. Not, surely, in the Scrip- 
tures of the New Testament, where we are taught that 
there is but one mediator between G-od and man, and 
that we must worship Grod in spirit and in truth. 
Whence, then, is it ? Clearly from Paganism. And 
so undeniable is its paternity, that many Romanists 
not only will not question it, but will absolutely defend 
it as a capital stroke of policy to bring over the people 
from Paganism to Popery without their knowing it ; 
and what was once, on this ground, a stroke of policy, 
is now retained and defended as essential to impress 
the senses of the vulgar, with whom spiritual concep- 
tions is a work of great difficulty ! 

And as it is in the Pantheon, so it is in the other hea- 
then temples that yet remain in Rome ; they have pull- 
ed down one idol and set up another, or merely changed 
its name. The sweet little temple of Vesta is now pos- 
sessed by the Madonna of the Sun ; that of Fortuna 
Yirilis by Mary the Egyptian ; that of Saturn by St. 
Adrian ; that of Romulus and Remus by Cosmas and 
Damianus ; and so on to the end of the chapter. And 
with Dr. Middleton I can truly say, that I would rath- 
er give divine honors with Pagan Rome to the found- 
ers of empires, than with Papal Rome to fictitious 
samts, whose miracles and holiness have nothing to sus- 
tain them but the miserable legends of the monks of 
the Dark Ages. If I must bow before pictures or im- 
ages at all, give me Vesta, and Saturn, and Romulus ; 



73 

Pagan better than Papal gods. 

and I will give the Madonna of the Sun, and Adrian, 
and Cosmas to the Pope and his priests. 

Are you not now beginning to see that Romanism is 
far more Pagan than Christian ? 

With great respect, yours. 

D 



74 kirwan's letters. 

Landing at Naples. Appearance of priests. 



LETTER IX. 

Cumulative Evidence of the Paganism of Romanism. — Landing at Na- 
ples. — Appearance of the Ecclesiastics. — Convent house. — Church of 
Capuchins at Rome. — Preserved Monk. — Horrid Burying-place. — 
Nuns — how manufactured. — Whence Monks and Nuns, and for 
what. — Tools of the Priests and Corrupters of the People. 

My dear Sir, — I am not yet through with the Pa- 
ganism of Romanism. The evidences of the paternity 
of the religion of the Seven Hills grow with investiga- 
tion. Lili:e the ruins of Pompeii, they lie concealed be- 
neath a slight external covering, which is easily re- 
moved. 

On landing at Naples, I was struck with the large 
number of ecclesiastics, in different garbs, that were to 
be seen in all the streets. They all looked extremely 
fantastical and self-satisfied. Some wore a three-cocked 
hat, and some no hat. Some wore shorts, and stock- 
ings, and shoes with large buckles, and some wore 
sandals without stockings ; but, whether they wore 
shorts or not, I could not tell from their flowing dress. 
Some wore an elegant priestly coat of black cloth, girt 
with a sash around the waist, lifted up a little on one 
side in order to facilitate their walking ; while others 
wore a coarse garb, flowing from their shoulders to their 
feet, with a cord around their loins. I soon learned 
that the fat, well-fed, and well-dressed persons, w^ith 
large shovel hats, were priests ; and that the persons 



LETTERS. 75 



Monks. Their dress. Vulgar appearance, 

without hats, wearing sandals and no stockings, and a 
kind of a shoe with no hind part to it, and which flap- 
ped against the sole of the foot as they walked, were 
monks and friars of various and varying orders. Of 
these persons I had often read, but now they were be- 
fore me a living reality. The walk, the look, the whole 
appearance of the priests seemed to testify that they be- 
longed to the better class of society ; and, as I was sub- 
sequently informed, they were persons whose parents 
had purchased for them admission to the priesthood as 
the cheapest way of securing to them a competent sup- 
port for life. But the monks and friars that were 
swarming every where bore the strongest evidence of a 
mean origin. Their low foreheads — ^their shaven pates 
— their unwashed faces and uncombed hair — their 
coarse and filthy garments, and their unwashed feet, 
bore evidence against them. Of these monks and 
friars there are many orders in Naples. Some you see 
with bags on their backs, and others with baskets in 
their hands, begging from door to door ; while others 
are confined to their rooms in their houses, the volun- 
tary subjects of rules and customs the most supersti- 
tious and degrading. On the side of the hill which 
rises up in the midst of Naples, and which is surmount- 
ed by a strong fortification, is a monkish house. It is 
a very large establishment, making a hollow square, 
with the grave-yard in the centre ; and each of the 
posts of the fence by which the grave-yard is inclosed 
is surmounted by a naked skull. These monks never 
speak, and never eat at the same table, save on the 
Sabbath ! And these establishments you find every 
where in Italy. I visited one of their churches in 



76 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

Preserved monk. Horrid burying-place. 

Rome, where I witnessed the most revolting sight I 
ever beheld. It is the Chm^ch of the Capuchins,, where 
is the magnificent painting of the Archangel by Gruido. 
In a glass case, under one of the side altars, is the body 
of a monk, laid out in his old robes, in a state of mi- 
raculous preservation. Whether it was dried flesh or 
ivax I could not tell ; I suspected the latter. I asked 
the monk that attended on us why the flesh of this 
man was preserved, while that of others decayed. His 
reply was most ludicrous. Putting his hands together, 
and turning up his eyes, like a duck in a thunder- 
storm, he answered, '' Because he was a good fellow." 
The burying-place of these monks is a horrible sight 
It seems to have been gotten up to outrage all the feel- 
ings of humanity. It is partly under the church, and 
is entered from the yard by a series of arches. The 
burial spot may be twenty or thirty feet by seven or 
eight. The clay of this bed, I was told, was brought 
from Palestine. In this bed the monks are buried, 
where they lie until the flesh fallsvfrom their bones. 
Then the bones are taken up, and some of them, after 
being jointed with wires into a perfect skeleton, are 
dressed up in their old garbs, and hung up around the 
place, while the skulls, the bones, and the ribs of 
others are vnrought into fantastical arches arid candle- 
sticks, which every where cover the walls and meet the 
eye. Even Rome does not present a more revolting 
spectacle. And shreds from an old dfrty garment of that 
preserved monk, whose name was Crispini, are said to 
have v^ought miracles, and have been sold at exor- 
bitant prices. And in this revolting den of superstition 
and indolence are one hundred and fifteen of these dirty 



LETTERS. 77 



A begging monk. An incident. Nuns. 

Capuchins, who, judging from their appearance, stand 
far more in need of a thorough washing than they do 
of victuals or wine ! 

These monks, who spend their time between pray- 
ing, begging, sleeping, and sinning, you meet every 
where. One of them was regularly stationed in the 
hall of the Hotel d'Angleterre every morning to beg 
alms from the strangers retiring from the breakfast- 
room. My traveling friend, who liked them about as 
much as I did, put his hand in his pocket one morning, 
as if hunting for a franc for the shorn monk. Finger- 
ing his pocket, he went up stairs, and the monk after 
him, his eyes beaming with hope. At the top of the first 
stairs, he signified that he could not find any thing to 
give him. He stopped a little, but cast a longing, beg- 
ging look after him. Again my friend commenced to 
finger his pockets, and, again flushed with hope, the 
monk renewed his pursuit. But, while ascending the 
next flight, the incorrigible Protestant came down upon 
the lazy rogue with a thundering rebuke, under which 
he went down stairs at least as fast as he ascended 
them. 

And you. Sir, must well know how large a space in 
the history of Romanism is filled by the rise and the 
progress, the conflicts and the crimes, of the various 
classes and orders of monks and friars. 

It has also called into requisition female monks, 
called nuns, who have contributed not a little to the 
extending of its plans. The first of these persons I 
saw abroad was on a funeral occasion, in the Made- 
leine, in Paris. The deceased was obviously very poor, 
and the priest in waiting i^umbled a service over the 



78 kirwan's letters. 

Their appearance. Whence, and how made. 

coffin, so hurried and so heartless as to fill me with 
contempt for him. The nun, who, perhaps, was the 
nurse of the deceased, was there, and a more common 
or ugly woman no man might wish to see. There 
were three of them on the steamer from Lyons to Avig- 
non, and, in appearance and manners, they were the 
very ditto of her I saw in Paris. The great vulgarity 
of their appearance in Italy put to flight all the images 
of beauty, and delicacy, and modesty which I had ever 
associated with them ; nor could I account for what I 
observed until my visit to the Catacombs at Naples. 
As you approach these subterranean graves, there are 
two large buildings on either hand ; that on the left is 
devoted to the care of poor old men, and that on the 
right to poor young girls, who are deserted by their 
parents, or ''who had no parents," as said our valet. 
This building is capable of containing between one 
and two thousand girls, and is usually full ; and all 
of these are compelled to he rmns. The fact that they 
are taken from the very lowest walks of life accounts 
for the commonness of their appearance ; and it is the 
same fact which accounts for the yet more common, 
and dirty, and sensual appearance of most of the monks 
and friars that I saw abroad. Here and there a dis- 
appointed maiden may flee to a nunnery to hide her 
blushes or her shame, and become a lady abbess ; or 
a greatly criminal noble may flee to a monastery to 
hide his crimes, and to play the gentleman fanatic 
among boors ; but, as a rule, monks, friars, and nuns are 
from the very sweepings of society, and ever have been. 
Italian nuns, as far as they came under my observa- 
tion, needed not the walls (rf a nunnery to protect them 



LETTERS. 79 



Celibacy not enjoined. Confraternities. 

from marriage, for I have seen many females far pret- 
tier enjoy the benefits of single blessedness without 
any to disturb or to make them afraid. And such are 
the monks and friars that are shipped here in cargoes 
to civilize and to Christianize us ! 

But the question again arises, "Whence these orders 
of monks and friars ? Whence these nuns of various 
names, and various colored vails ? There is nothing 
like them in the Old Testament— nothing certainly in 
the New. Celibacy is nowhere enjoined on man or 
wom.an, saint or sinner, in the Bible. Seclusion from 
the world, like that practiced in monasteries, is no- 
where enjoined by the sacred books of our religion. 
When Paul speaks of persons wandering in deserts and 
in mountains, in dens and caves of the earth, he refers 
to those banished from their homes and friends by the 
ferocity of persecutors. Whence, then, these orders ? 
They are all of Pagan origin. You, Sir, need not be 
told how orders of priests abounded among the Egyp- 
tians and the Grreeks, nor how they were copied by the 
Romans. The merest novice in mythology will re- 
member the Pagan confraternities, to which Francis- 
cans, Benedictines, Dominicans, and Jesuits so nearly 
correspond, and the Vestal Virgins, to which Popish 
nuns are so exact a counterpart. How exactly Homer 
and Plato painted the monks of La Trappe in their de- 
scriptions of the priests of Dodonean Jove ! Anchorites, 
hermits, recluses, and monks existed in Asia long be- 
fore the Christian era ; and, at the present time, the 
countries which profess the religion of Brama, Fo, 
Lama, and Mohammed, are full of fakirs, and santons, 
toners, talapoins, bonzes, and dervises, whose fanatical 



80 kirwan's l:etters. 

Monks among Pagans. Their uses. 

and absurd penances are the arts of deception, and not 
the fruits of piety. And in some of the countries of 
Asia at this hour you will find priests and monks un- 
der the vows of celibacy without keeping them, with 
shorn heads, with and without turbans, and wearing 
peculiar robes tied about their loins, as thick as under 
the shadow of St. Elmo, or as on the banks of the Ti- 
ber. 

But why these monks, and friars, and nuns ? Has 
the question ever occurred to you ? The bishops are 
generally engaged in the higher affairs of the state or 
the Church ; the priests are saying masses in deserted 
churches, and faring sumptuously ; and the monks, 
and friars, and nuns, collected from the common peo- 
ple, and sympathizing with them, ar« abroad among 
them, as the curates or assistants of the priests and 
bishops, for the purpose of filling their minds with fa- 
bles, and keeping them in bondage. They are priest- 
ly spies among the people, save those that go into se 
elusion ; and hence you find them begging for the peo- 
ple, sitting with the people in the streets, mingling 
with them in the market-places, lounging with the laz- 
aroni, and laughing with them, and all for the purpose 
of doing the dirty work of the priests, and filling their 
minds with superstitious legends. The object of im- 
porting to our shores monks and nuns can not be mis- 
^taken ; and as soon as public sentiment will allow it, 
you will see these lazy and wicked wretches sticking 
their shorn heads into the cottages of the poor, to warn 
them against all the elevating influences of Christian- 
ity, and flouting their coarse robes in our thorough- 
fares for the same purpose for which the Pharisees ol 



81 

The curse of Papal nations. Deliverance prayed. 

old made broad their phylacteries. These monkish or- 
ders were, and are, the curse of Pagan nations ; they 
wofuUy corrupted the Christian Church ; they were 
mainly the authors of the lying legends of the Dark 
Ages, which Papal priests are endorsing even in Amer- 
ica ; they are now a grievous curse to the Papal na- 
tions of the world. 0, Sir, will you not join me in the 
prayer that they may never curse, either by their pres- 
ence or their arts, our own happy, thrice happy coun- 
try? 

With great respect, yours. 
D2 



82 kirwan's letters. 

Letter from Rome. Domitian. 



LETTER X. 

Letter from Rome dated A.D. 90. — The Paganism of Rome then, the 
exact Picture of Papal Rome now 

My DEAR Sir, — That you and all men may see at a 
glance the entire truth of the Paganism of Romanism, 
which I have already so fully proved and illustrated, 
will you permit me to go back to the year 90 of the 
Christian era, and, like my friend ^^ Nicholas, Cardinal 
Archbishop of Westminster," to address you a letter 
"out of the Flaminian Grate," describing the religion 
of Rome, both as to its priests and ceremonies, as then 
existing ? 

Rome, A.D. 90. 

Sir, — I have just reached this great city after a tedi- 
ous voyage. I have spent several days in visiting the 
many temples here erected to the worship of the gods, 
and in inquiries as to the civil and social state of the 
people ; and I now proceed to detail to you what I have 
seen and learned. 

Domitian has just brought to a close the Dacian war, 
having secured a peace on very humiliating terms. 
This, instead of humbling him, has greatly excited his 
turbulent passions, so that no man is now safe here, 
unless he would degrade himself to flatter the t3n-ant 
and his tools. The philosophers are expelled, Chris- 
tians are greatly persecuted, and are prohibited from 



83 

Awful tyranny. Immorality. Pagan priests. 

meeting for worship under the severest penalties ; and 
a widespread fear of the emperor is among all the 
people. Rumors of conspiracies against his life are 
very frequent, and those who are suspected as enemies 
are cruelly torn from their families ; hut what is done 
with them none even conjecture. The unseen hand 
of tyranny is every where felt, and every person is in 
hourly dread of its chains or its daggers. 

But very few Christians are to he found here. They 
are compelled to worship in secret, where the eye of 
tyranny can not see them. The most frightful immo- 
ralities prevail among the people, although the altars 
and images of the gods are every where to he seen, and 
although their temples are multiplied and gorgeous, 
and their worship is maintained with many and impo- 
sing ceremonies. And what seems to me surpassing 
strange is, that the more immoral the people, the more 
they are attached to their religious rites. 

There is here a wonderful array of Pagan priests, 
filling the temples, and to he met with in all the streets. 
These are frequently to he seen leading in processions 
in honor of the gods, which processions are calculated 
to please the people and render them superstitious. 
One of these I have just witnessed. The magistrates 
in their robes were there ; the priests in their surplices 
were there ; with wax candles in their hands, and car- 
rying the images of the gods, finely dressed. These 
were followed by young men in white vestments, sing- 
ing in honor of the god whose festival was celebrated ; 
and these, again, were followed by crowds of all kinds 
of people, with candles and flambeaux in their hands. 
The whole scene was very gorgeous, but very idola- 



84 

Pontifex Maximus. His honors and powers. 

trous. The common people are said to be fond of these 
things, and they are multiplied by the priests on that 
account. 

The priests here are very numerous, and wield a vast 
power. I will, therefore, give you some account of 
them. The chief and head of them all is called Pon^ 
tifex Maximus^ or sovereign pontiff. This man is the 
visible head of their religion, and is the chief of a body 
of priests, which, in their collective capacity, is called 
collegium or college. This college is the final judge 
in all cases relating to religious things ; and where 
there is no written law, they prescribe what they think 
proper. This college is a body of vast influence, and 
always sits in secret. When the pontiff dies, it elects 
a new one, and usually from their own number. The 
Pontifex is almost worshiped as a god ; indeed, he is 
sometimes called god, although he only claims to be 
the vicegerent of Jupiter. He claims to exercise among 
men the authority of Jupiter — ^he lives in royal state — 
he levies taxes upon the inferior priests and upon the 
people, and he claims a respect from the people, which, 
to me, is just like adoration or worship. Men bow be- 
fore him as he passes, and none can approach him with- 
out kissing his feet. He is the infallible interpreter to 
whom the people resort ; and while he punishes others 
at discretion, he is not himself amenable to the judg- 
ment of the senate or the people. All priests, and al- 
most all things, are subject to him. He regulates the 
year and the public calendar. He usually wears a gor- 
geous robe bordered with purple, and a cap in the form 
of a cone, and holds a rod in his hand wrapped round 
with wool. But you should come to Rome yourself to 



85 

Other priests. Temples. 

understand the power of this man, and the splendor 
with which he appears in public, and in which he lives 
in private. 

In the train of the Pontifex Maximus there is always 
a numerous priesthood, divided into several classes. 
Some of these are called Augurs, some Quindecemviri, 
some Septemviri; these are the chief. But, besides 
these, there are fraternities of priests less considerable, 
though quite influential. These, in the language of this 
country, are called Fratres Ambervales, Curiones, Fe- 
ciales, Sodales. Besides these, there are priests of par- 
ticular gods, as the priests of Jupiter, of Mars, of Pan, 
of Hercules, and of Cybele, the mother of the gods. 
There are also here women they call Virgines Vestales, 
or Vestal Virgins, who are consecrated to the worship 
of Vesta, and who enjoy singular honor and privileges. 
These all wear peculiar garments, by which they are 
distinguished from one another and from all the people. 
Their dress tells who and what they are, wherever you 
meet them, and you meet them every where. And all 
these priests have servants, who wait upon them when 
they are performing rites at the altars of the gods. 

The houses erected to the gods are many and beauti- 
ful. These are called Templse, or temples. I have just 
returned from the Pantheon, where I witnessed a cere- 
mony which I will describe to you. As the morning 
here is regarded as the most propitious part of the day, 
their great ceremonies are all ended before noon. The 
priest entered by a door, dressed in a white robe called 
alba^ and ascended by a few steps to the altar. Ho 
wore, also, a tunic of various colors. His head was 
shaven, which struck me as singular, and he had upon 



86 KIRWA\*S LETTERS. 

Senric^ ::: Lie ?i::±T;n. ^LaBj zods. 

his breast a riclil}'-decorated covering called a pectoral. 
He wore, also, a vail. Tlie whole dress struck me 03 
very fanciful, nor conld you conjecture, save firom hi? 
head and face, whether lie was a man or a woman. 
When he had washed his hands, he marched round tke 
altar, and, having made obeisance before it, he stood 
fronting the people. Lighted tapers covered the altar. 
The servants and ioferior priests burned incense, while 
the priest made many prostrations. He always spoke 
iu Latin, which I do not snfficiently know fuUy to com- 
prehend him. When the ceremony was ended^ the god 
in whose honor it was performed was carefully locked 
in a little box upon the altar, and then the priest dis- 
missed the people with these words : " Hissio est." 
And after being sprinkled by the inferiors with water 
mingled with salt, which is called " lustrahs aqua," or 
holy water, they left the temple, smiling and taDdnor, 
and apparently gratified. And, with little variarion, 
this is a picture of what I have witnessed in all the 
temples I have yet visited. The sacrifices, as I had 
supposed, did not always consist of slain animals ; 
sometimes nothing is offered hut a little round wafer, 
which is called mola^ and the offering of which, as they 
declare, removes^ the sins of the people. This was in- 
stituted by ^'uma. and is called '* the vnbloody sacri- 
fice:' 

Nothing here more sorrowfully impresses a true mind 
than their great multiplication of gods. They have 
twelve superior gods, with whose names you are famil- 
iar : and they have gods inferior, which they mtdtiply 
without end. These latter are persons selected for di- 
vine honors from the ranks of men. and who, for their 



87 

Apotheosis. A middle state. 

virtues or merits, are placed among the gods. "When 
the Collegium, of which I have already spoken, has re- 
solved to deify any person, they proclaim his apotheo- 
sis, which proclamation places him among the gods. 
Immediately the ignorant people hegin to pray to him, 
and to invoke his aid. First they make a god of him, 
and then they make him pay for the honor conferred ! 
From these small gods it is customary for classes and 
professions to select a patron. Musicians have select- 
ed Apollo ; sailors, Neptune ; farmers, Ceres ; soldiers, 
Mars ; cities, towns, and persons select their guardian 
gods. Rome has selected Jupiter Capitolinus, and 
Athens Minerva ; and families have their gods in their 
houses, and individuals carry their patrons in their pock- 
ets. And to these gods they give the honor and pray- 
er which are due only to the only true Grod. I saw a 
poor sailor, the other day, who had escaped drowning 
at Ostia, hang up his coat as a votive offering in the 
temple of Neptune, and prostrate himself before his 
image as if it were our Grod ! 

I find also here a belief of a state somewhere be- 
tween hell and the Elysian fields, where the souls of the 
departed go which were not bad enough for hell nor 
good enough for heaven. I know not whether they 
borrowed this doctrine from Virgil, who is here in great 
repute, and who teaches it ; or whether it was older than 
Virgil. Probably he only embodied what was a popu- 
lar superstition in his fine poem. But the use which 
the priests make of it has strongly impressed me with 
their want of honesty. They pretend to the power of 
abridging the awful sufferings of souls in this inter- 
mediate place by prayers and sacrifices, and for which 



88 kirwan's letters. 

4 wicked city. Wicked priests. 

they charge very liigh prices when the people are able 
to pay. In this way the Pagan priests here draw 
enormous revenues from the living for the saving of the 
souls of the dead. They speculate on the sorrows of 
the living ; and from hearts broken by afflictions and 
trials they draw some of their chief revenues. 

But I may weary you with these details which I 
make, and which you must read with sorrow. This 
is a wicked city, and its priests are the most wicked 
of its people. It is a most superstitious city. But the 
power of these Pagan priests is gradually giving way, 
and the influence of superstition over the people is be- 
coming less and less. The true G-ospel of Jesus Christ 
is here as a leaven — may it leaven the mass. It is the 
only remedy for the sins and follies of this great but 
wicked people. 

Very truly your friend. 

Now, Sir, if you wall turn to the history of Rome at 
the date of this letter ; if you will turn to any writer 
on Roman Antiquities ; if you will read Adams on the 
Religion of the Romans, commencing with page 234 
of the New York edition of 1826, the one now before 
me, you will find that I have given you an exact ac- 
count, as far as such an account can be drawn from his- 
tory, of the priests and ceremonies of Paganism, as far 
as I have gone, and at the time selected. Were it 
necessary to go farther into the conduct of the priests, 
and the manner and character of their ceremonies, I 
could have brought out other things that would equal- 
ly astonish you. And now, Sir, I w^ould seriously ask 
you what is the difference between Pagan Rome in the 



89 

Rome in the year 90 — Rome in 1852. 

year 90 of the Christian era, and Papal Rome in the 
year 1852 ? I assure you. Sir, I can see but little. 
The Pontifex Maximus you have in the Pope ; the Col- 
legium in the sacred college of cardinals ; the priests 
of various classes you have in the varying classes of 
the monks and nuns ; the multiplication of demigods 
you have in the canonization of the saints ; the cere- 
monies described in the Pantheon you have there at 
this very hour, almost unchanged ; the wafer called 
the " mola" you have in the " unbloody sacrifice of the 
mass ;" the intermediate state between Hell and Elys- 
ium, as sung by Yirgil, you have in Purgatory; and 
the cruelty of Domitian and his tools, and their perse- 
cution of the Christians, you have in the infamous, de- 
testable conduct of Pius IX. and his cardinals ; and so 
on to the end of the chapter. Popery, therefore, is lit- 
tle else than Paganism extended. All unbiased minds 
on earth, capable of forming an opinion on the subject, 
must admit this, especially if they visit Rome, and 
examine the subject, as I have done, in what were 
once Pagan, and now are Papal temples. 

And here. Sir, you have one of my chief reasons for 
addressing these letters to you. A man high in char- 
acter, station, intelligence, and influence, you are 
claimed as a Romanist by Papal priests. Whatever 
may be your private views, you would prefer the name 
of Christian to Pagan ; while a thorough Papist, can 
you be less than Pagan ? And, as the able and tried 
friend of your country and its institutions, would you 
not prefer that it and they should be under the mold- 
ing influence of the religion of Jesus Christ, rather than 
under that of the old Pontifex Maximus of the Seven 



90 kirwan's letters. 

The Bible to be preferred to SybiUine leaves. 

Hills ? Is not the Bible a better book for our people 
than the traditions of the Sybils, doubtfully or dogmat- 
ically interpreted from Papal altars ? Are not minis- 
ters of Christ better teachers of the people than the 
commissioned spies of the holy college of cardinals — 
than the lineal successors of the augurs, the curiones, 
the sodales, the Virgines Vestales of the days of Domi- 
tian ? Are you doing your duty to your noble coun- 
try, the hope of the aspirants of true liberty in all the 
earth, by giving even the approbation of your silence 
to the efforts of priests from Ireland, Austria, and Italy, 
to transplant to our shores nominally Popish, but really 
Pagan institutions, v^hose very best influences have 
been always adverse to the highest interests of human- 
ity ? Honor yourself and your posterity, and bless 
your country, by a wise and powerful effort, such as 
you can put forth, to prevent Papal priests from Pa- 
ganizing our country. "^ 
"With great respect, yours. 



kirwan's letters. 91 

Catacombs at Naples. Altar. St. Januarius. 



LETTERXI. 

Sham Miracles. — Altar in the Catacombs. — St. Januarius — the Lique- 
faction of his Blood. — A terrible Incident for the Priests. — Ara Coeli. — 
Bambino. — A Scene. — History of Bambino. — Its wonderful Powers. 

My dear Sir, — Having, as I trust, satisfied you, and 
all my readers, that Popery, in its forms, ceremonies, 
and external arrangements, is nothing hut the Pagan- 
ism of the old Roman state, which Christianity found 
there on its first introduction into our world, permit me 
to proceed to the consideration of some other topics. 

On entering the Catacombs at Naples, the first thing 
that strikes you, so as to attract attention, is a rude 
Papal altar, covered with all the insignia of Romanism. 
You ask. Why is it there buried under a high mount- 
ain, and shut out from all save those visiting this won- 
derful receptacle of the dead of the heroic ages of Italy ? 
The reply is, that " it marks the spot where the bones 
of the far-famed St. Januarius were found." " How 
long did they remain here," said I to our guide, ''be- 
fore discovered?" ''About three hundred years," he 
replied. " But how tell, at that distance of time, whose 
bones they were?" '^By miracle," he replied. Of 
course, I could say no more. In the cathedral church 
of the city, dedicated to this saint, is a beautiful chapel, 
where are two vials of his blood ; I was shown the 
case in which they were locked up ; but my eyes were 
unworthy of seeing them. " How," said I to the guide, 



92 

Liquefaction. Dead head. Alban Butler. 

" could they get this blood, when it was not known 
where his body was for three hundred years ?" " By 
miracle," was again the reply. ''When, and how is 
it," I asked, " that this blood liquefies ?" '' In Septem- 
ber, May, and December," he replied, " and at other 
times when the bishops pray. And the blood melts 
when the saint's head looks at it." "But the head is 
dead — ^how can it look ?" " By miracle," was the re- 
ply. " But how does the look of the head melt the 
blood ?" " By miracle," was the answer. And, egre- 
giously absurd as the whole thing is, it is by these sham 
mkacles that Romish priests, in all lands where belief 
in them is the^ vulgar faith, seek to retain their ascend- 
ency over a deluded people. And in all this they prove 
themselves to be the worthy and true successors of the 
Pagan priests, who sought by prodigies and omens to 
excite and strengthen the vulgar belief. Let me place 
some of these miracles before you. 

There, in two old vials, is the fabled blood of St. 
Januarius. On the set time, these vials are brought 
out by a priest ; and the head, which was cut off about 
the year 306, and which must have been often renewed 
in nearly sixteen hundred years, is brought out and 
placed near them. The blood melts at the sight of the 
head. The Rev. Alban Butler, a most erudite scholar 
in lying wonders, tells us, ''that when the blood is 
brought within sight of the head, though at a consid- 
erable distance, it melts, bubbles up, and, upon the least 
motion, flows on all sides." Then a boy holds up a 
lamp behind the vial to make the liquefaction visible. 
Then the faithful, usually composed of beggars, press 
toward the altar, when a priest touches their forehead 



LETTERS. 93 



The farce. Vesuvius put out. A good story 

and lips with the wonderful vials. When persons in 
a clerical dress approach, which is rarely the case, it is 
touched to their forehead, lips, and bosom ; and surely, 
like the soothsayers of old, they must laugh when they 
look each other in the face. It would seem to me that 
the man who . left the company of waiters upon the 
priests, who were saying high mass for the purpose of 
showing us the wonders of the church, was laughing 
in his sleeve at our apparent credulity as he was de- 
scribing to us the miracle-working relics. And that 
miracle of stupid credulity. Rev. Alban Butler, tells us, 
with all seriousness, that in 1707, the shrine of St. 
Januarius, carried in solemn procession, extinguished 
a fiery eruption of Mount Vesuvius ! Indeed, he at- 
tributes the preservation of Naples from being buried, 
like Pompeii, in the lava of its neighboring volcano, to 
its possession of the head, and blood, and bones of this 
old saint, whose holy history is a monkish fable. A 
less credulous person might ask, how Vesuvius could 
send its lava to Naples, without first making a bridge 
across the bay ? 

The following story, often published to the confusion 
of the priests, was confirmed to me in Naples, and by 
a Neapolitan, who, although avowing himself a Cath- 
olic, loved the priests just as much as if he were an 
American. When the French, in the days of Napoleon, 
occupied that country, the blood of St. Januarius refused 
to liquefy, as a token of his vast displeasure with the 
people for permitting the Franks to abide there. The 
awful news was spread in whispers from the confes- 
sionals through the city. The people, especially the 
Lazzaroni, were determined on another '' Sicilian Ves- 



94 kirwan's letters. 

The eflfect of cannon. Church of Ara Coeli. 

persj" and on the procession of the vials, which usu- 
ally calls out the entu'e populace. The French com- 
mander was informed of all the plot. The day arrived. 
High mass was said. The old head of the saint was 
brought within sight of the old vials, but the blood re- 
fused to liquefy ! A low murmur passed through all 
the streets. Two cannons were wheeled in a moment 
before the church, and other cannon were at the corners 
of the streets, ready to sweep them in an instant. Or- 
ders were sent to the priests in management of the jug- 
gle, that unless the blood liquefied in ten minutes, the 
church and city would be fired. In five minutes the 
saint changed his mind ; he became alarmed, fearing 
the efiects of a lighted match when placed in contact 
with gunpowder. The blood boiled up, and all the peo- 
ple rejoiced together. And the priests yet delude the 
people with this contemptible farce ! The priests that 
performed Pagan ceremonies in the temple of Castor and 
Pollux would have given up this bungling fraud long 
ago. 

You have no doubt heard of, if you have not seen, 
the church of Ara Coeli at Rome. It is a very ugly, 
barn-looking affair oii the Capitoline Hill, and on the 
very spot, it is said, where stood the temple of Jupiter 
Capitolinus. It is in the 'possession of the Franciscan 
friars, a brotherhood, as I can testify, that stand sadly 
in need of washing. This church is less famed for its 
fine frescoes illustrating the life of St. Bernard, by Pin- 
turricchio, than for its wonderful figure of the infant 
Savior, the '^Sanctissimo Bambino," whose power in 
curing the sick has given it a world-wide popularity, 
and which receives more fees than any three physicians 



LETTERS. 95 



The Bambino. Its dress. Healing process. 

in Rome. '^ Bambind^^ is the Italian word for child ; 
and this image is called II Bambino — The Child^ to 
mark its superiority to all others. The bare-headed 
monks, either bowing profoundly to the earth, or pious- 
ly turning up their faces to heaven, call it ^'11 Sanctis- 
simo Bambino." 

I have seen this wonderful image, and yet I live ! 
It is a wooden doll about two feet long, and not unlike, 
in form, to the Dutch dolls which are often given among 
us as a holiday present to children. It is wrapped in 
swaddling clothes after the custom of the Italians, so 
as to cover it all save its head and its feet. On its head 
is a royal crown, sparkling with brilliants ; and from 
its head to its feet, it is covered with rubies, emeralds, 
and diamonds. This is the favorite divinity of the low- 
er classes of the Romans, almost casting into the shade 
that of Mary herself ! 

As the good fortune which always attended me would 
have it, I entered the little chapel where this image is 
kept in state, just in time to see his little reverence go 
through a healing process. A monk opened for us the 
main door, and showed us into a small room, whence 
we were shown by another monk into the wonderful 
chapel. There were there, kneeling before the altar, 
three poor women with a sick child. The priest who 
acted in the affair was going through some ceremony 
before the altar. Soon he turned to the right, and with 
a solemnity which, because feigned, was laughable, 
opened a little cradle in which lay the glittering doll. 
He prayed over it ; and then, taking it in his hands as 
if unworthy to touch it, placed it in an upright posi- 
tion on the altar. Here he prayed over it again. Hf 



96 kiravan's letters. 

The ceremony Its miracles. Histoiy. 

then took it in his hands, and touched, with its toe, the 
head of the sick child, and crossed it with it. He then 
put its toe to the lips of the child, which was made to 
kiss it. And then each of the women, who were all 
the while upon their knees, kissed its foot. After a lit- 
tle more ceremony. Bambino was put back in his beau- 
tiful cradle, and the women withdrew. "When the 
chapel was empty of Italians, we were invited inside 
by the priest. We were taken up to the cradle. He 
told us of the immense value of the jewels, many of 
them the gifts of kings ; of the many miracles wrought 
by Bambino ; and pointed to the many silver and gold 
hearts by which it was surrounded, in evidence. He 
gave us some items of its history, which were very rich. 
The cradle lies under a canopy ; at one end of it is 
Joseph ; at the other, the Virgin Mary ; and over it is 
an image of G-od the Father ! The priest was polite, 
communicative, but grossly ignorant. We paid him a 
few pauls, and retired, wondering more, and more, and 
more at the shameless, lying wonders of Popery ; at the 
folly and wickedness of its priests ; and at the stupid- 
ity of its people. 

As the Bambino is among the most wonderful things 
at Rome, and is worth more than a mine of gold to the 
dirty monks of Ara Coeli, I will give you some account 
of it, as quoted from its authentic history, published 
with the permission of the Pope and cardinals, and for 
the edification of the faithful ! 

It was carved in Jerusalem, by a monk of St. Fran- 
cis, from a tree of olive, which grew near to the Mount 
of Olives. The good monk was in want of paint, and 
could find none. By prayer and fasting he sought paint 



KIR WAN's LETTERS. 97 

Miraculous paint. Saved from drowning. Its powers. 

from heaven. On a certain day he fell asleep, and lo ! 
when he awoke, the little doll was perfectly painted, 
the wood looking just like flesh ! The fame of this 
prodigy spread all over the country, and was the means 
of the conversion of many infidels. It was made for 
Rome, and the maker embarked with it for Italy. But 
the ship was wrecked ; and when all gave up the holy 
image as lost, lo ! the case in which it was, suddenly 
and miraculously appeared at Leghorn ! This wonder- 
fully increased its fame and the veneration of the peo- 
ple. Thence it was soon transported to Rome ; and 
when first exposed to the devout gaze of believers on 
the Capitoline Hill, their shouts of joy and their clam- 
orous hallelujahs ascended to the stars ! On a certain 
occasion, it is said that a devout lady took away with 
her the pretty doll to her own house ; but, in a few 
days, he miraculously returned to his own little chap- 
el, ringing all the bells of the convents as he passed ! 
The bells assembled all the monks, and as they pressed 
into the church, behold, to their infinite joy. Bambino 
was seated on the altar ! Did you ever hear of such a 
wonderful doll ? 

But this is not all. It is the universal belief among 
the lower classes of the Romans, that the laying of this 
doll at the foot of the bed of a woman in child-birth 
insures a safe deliverance ! It is also the universal be- 
lief that this doll, by a change of its countenance, by 
becoming pale or flushed, infallibly indicates whether 
a sick person will live or die ! And when doctors fail, 
the aid of Bambino is invoked for the recovery of the 
sick. It visits the sick in a splendid coach, and is at- 
tended by priests in full canonicals. As it passes along 

E 



98 kirwan's letters. 

Its worship. A shameless fraud. 

through the streets, every head is uncovered, and, how- 
ever muddy may be the streets, the poor are on their 
knees for its worship. For these visitations, the monks, 
who have the doll in keeping, charge the most enor- 
mous prices. During my sojourn in Rome, it was sent 
for to the Vatican for the healing of somebody sick in 
the palace of the Pope ! And this miraculous image 
is exposed to public veneration and adoration in a scenic 
representation of the stable at Bethlehem, from the 25th 
of December to the 26th of January of each year, dur- 
ing which time tens of thousands of people crowd the 
Ara Coeli and the Capitoline Hill for the purposes of 
its worship ! 

Now, Sir, here is a shameless imposture, palmed off 
upon an ignorant people by impious priests and monks. 
Nor is this thing done in a corner. This outrageous 
fraud is not perpetrated in Connaught, nor in Mexico, 
nor in Austria, nor down in deeply-degraded Sicily, but 
in Rome — on the Capitoline Hill — and under the eye, 
and by the sanction of Pio Nono and his cardinals ! 
What epithets or adjectives does our language supply 
sufficiently strong to express our abhorrence of the enor- 
mous wickedness of Pope, cardinals, and priests, who 
would thus delude and degrade an ignorant and con- 
fiding people ! And yet. Sir, the priests of Romanism, 
steeped in these vile, lying superstitions and wonders, 
come over here to tell us in America that there is no 
salvation for us so long as we refuse to submit our 
necks to the yoke of this Pope and his cardinals ! 

And will you. Sir — will any American citizen, in any 
form, give their countenance to the shaven-pated mis- 
sionaries of such miraculous nonsense ? 

With great respect, yours. 



99 

Other sham miracles. Holy House of Loretto. 



LETTER XIL 

Sham Miracles. — Holy House of Loretto— its History — Flight — Dimen- 
sions. — Miracles. — Litany of our Lady of Loretto. — Perpetrators of 
such Frauds, Impostors. 

My dear Sir, — I am not yet through with the sham 
miracles of Romanism, gotten up, and shamelessly ad- 
vocated, even in our day, for the purpose of maintain- 
ing the terrible, the grinding influence of a wicked 
priesthood over an ignorant, deluded, and confiding 
people. Bad as is the bungle about St. Januarius, arid 
base as is the conduct of the dirty Franciscans with 
the bandaged Bambino, there are other things of the 
same kind, if possible, worse than these. 

Have you. Sir, ever heard of the once ^^ Very Rev. 
P. R. Kenrick, Y. Gr.," and now the Right Rev. Bishop 
Kenrick? He figures not a little among the Romish 
priests of this happy country. I have before me his 
wonderful work entitled '' The Holy House of Loretto." 
It is published by Cummiskey, of Philadelphia. The 
title-page is without date — so is the preface ; but the 
copy-right of it was secured by the publisher in the 
year 1841. And if you have any desire to see the mis- 
erable legends which these imported priests publish for 
the edification of the faithful, just glance at this won- 
derful book — I will not ask you to read its drivel. The 
authorship of such pages would subject any man, save 
a priest, to the charge or the suspicion of lunacy. But 
the world has become so accustomed to the lying won- 



100 kirwan's letters. 



Its history. Flight to Dalraatia. The Virgin. 

ders of priests, and knows so well the objects for which 
they are put forward, that now they excite little more 
than a smile of contempt. 

This veracious book of the ^^ Very Rev." and vera- 
cious " P. R. Kenrick, V. &.," proves to the satisfaction 
of all the credulous that the house in which the Savior 
was born became early an object of deep veneration ; 
that Helena found it at Nazareth about three hundred 
years after the incarnation ; that it was carried by an- 
gels through the air in May, 1291, and laid down by 
them upon a little eminence in Dalmatia, where it at- 
tracted wonderful attention, and performed wonderful 
miracles of healing; that when doubts arose as to its 
character, ^Hhe blessed Virgin, surrounded by angelie 
spirits," appeared to Alexander, then priest of a church 
near by, and sick of a violent fever, and informed him 
that in that house she was born, lived, received the 
message of Grabriel, and conceived the Son of G-od. 
This vision appeared to Alexander ^^ between sleeping 
and waking," and when he had a violent fever. These, 
you know, are circumstances under which many be- 
sides '^ this respectable ecclesiastic" have strange vis- 
ions. She moreover told him that the apostles had con- 
verted this house into a church ; that Peter had con- 
secrated its altar ; that, because insulted in Nazareth 
by infidels, and neglected by Christians, it was carried 
over by angels to Dalmatia ; and that, as a miraculous 
proof of all this, his health should be immediately re- 
stored. " On awaking, Alexander found himself im- 
mediately restored to health ;" and his story was told 
and believed, and was proved true by the miracle of 
his restoration ! 



LETTERS. 101 



Flight to Laureturne Walks off to a hill. 

But the story is not ended. The Dahnatians were 
not long to enjoy this heavenly gift of an old house. 
For some cause, not discovered by the profound research- 
es of the ^^ Very Rev. P. R. Kenrick, V. Gr.," the house 
resolved to take another journey ! So, on the night of 
the 10th of December, 1294, some shepherds, who were 
watching their flocks, beheld a house, surrounded by 
uncommon splendor, flying across the Adriatic, which 
separates Dalmatia from Italy. The shepherds waked 
up their companions to see the " mysterious object," 
and they all testified that ^^it was of a supernatural 
character." It pleased ^'the holy house" to rest in a 
district called Lauretum, either from its laurels, or from 
the name of the rich lady, Laureta, to whom it belong- 
ed ; and hence the name, ''the House of Loretto," which 
it retains even to this day ! Soon it became very fa- 
mous in its new location, and tens of thousands flock- 
ed to it for devotion and healing ! 

But the restless little house was not yet satisfied. 
The faithful, who sought to present, under its holy roof, 
their offerings to the Virgin, were often robbed by ban- 
dits. This greatly diminished the number of pilgrims, 
and, of course, the revenue of the priests. To remedy 
this evil, it walked off* to a small hill near the road, 
where the faithful might approach it without fear of 
robbery. This new miracle greatly increased the pub- 
lic reverence for it, and the revenue. This hill was the 
joint property of two brothers, who quarreled about the 
rent they were to receive, when, in the language of ''the 
Very Rev. P. R. Kenrick, V. Gr.," "most extraordinary 
to relate, this miraculous house was once more transfer- 
red, and placed in its present site, a very short distance 



102 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

Gregory and the rock. Its dimensions. Image of Mary 

beyond the property of the unworthy brothers." And 
there it remains " to this present." And to prove that 
all this is by no means incredible, he refers us, among 
other evidences, to the removal of a huge rock at the 
command of St. Grregory, as narrated by Alban Butler ! ! 
Now, Sir, I submit it to you, whether a priest who can 
write a narrative like this, in our age and country, is 
not entitled to wear a pallium made from the wool of 
holy sheep, or from the down of a goose ? 

This holy house, that can thus fly or walk at pleas- 
ure, is about thirty-two feet long, thirteen feet wide, 
and eighteen feet high, with a chimney and small bel- 
fry. The walls are of stone. There is in it a small' 
altar, the one dedicated by Peter ; and on it is an an- 
tique wooden cross. On the right of the altar is an 
image of the Virgin Mary, with the infant on her arm, 
with the hair of each divided after the manner of the 
people of Nazareth. This image is surrounded with 
gold lamps, by whose constant glare and dazzle it is 
somewhat concealed. The Virgin and Son are most 
gorgeously decorated, and are brilliant with precious 
stones. This holy image was carried to France in 1796, 
but it was brought back with pious pomp ; and, wel- 
comed by the discharge of cannon and the ringing of 
bells, it was borne to the holy house on a rich frame, 
carried by eight bishops, on the 5th day of January, 
1803. 

And the miracles wrought by this holy house are 
numerous and wonderful. It is hung round by '^ the 
votive offerings in gold, silver, wax, and other mate- 
rials," presented by those on whom miracles were per- 
formed. Pietro Barbo was there miraculously healed, 



103 

Barbo healed. Holy porringer. Holy mouse. 

and was informed by the Virgin that he would be elect- 
ed Pope ! He was so elected, and assumed the name 
of Paul II. He issued a buU, dated November 1, 1464, 
in which he speaks of " the great wonders and infinite 
miracles''^ wrought by means of the Holy Virgin in this 
house. This house has been the pet of many a Pope, 
who have expended treasures upon it ! And there it 
stands at the present hour, '^ the most celebrated sanc- 
tuary in Italy" — hung round by votive offerings of great 
value—visited by pilgrims from all parts of the world 
— and with a regular establishment of priests, sustain- 
ed at an enormous annual expense, mainly collected 
from the beggar pilgrims. There also is the ^^ holy por- 
ringer," in which pap was made for the infant Savior, 
and which imparts wonderful sanctity to every thing 
that is put into it ! A small stone from this house has 
been sold for many dollars ; and it is said that a poor 
little mouse caught there was preserved with great art- 
istical skill, and was an effectual preservative against 
diseases ! ! 

Now, Sir, permit me to ask you whether imported 
priests, one of whose bishops could write such a book 
as the ^^ Holy House of Loretto," in which such ridic- 
ulous fables are gravely detailed for the edification of 
the faithful, are the men to whom the formation of the 
religious sentiment and the conscience of our country 
should be committed ? When our people can believe 
such drivel, where will they be in the scale of civili- 
zation ? Where will be the greatness and the glory of 
the country of Washington ? 

But as to this ''Holy House of Loretto," there is a 
depth below any to which we have yet attained by the 



104 



K I R W A N S LETTERS. 



Miraculous picture. 



Its color. 



Exact likeness 



aid of the " Very Rev. P. R. Kenrick, Y. G-." I would 
gladly omit reference to it, because of its blasphemous 
superstition, and because of my reluctance to refer to a 
man who is daily proving himself more and more to be 
unworthy of confidence, and who is fast sinking to his 
true level in the estimation of Papist and Protestant ; 
but it seems necessary to the completion of my picture 
of this " Holy House." In this flying house is an im- 
age of the Virgin, with the infant Savior in her arms. 
It is grown black with age ; nor can you tell whether 
the person of whom it is an exact picture was black 
or white. Now, Sir, conceive of one of your own daugh- 
ters prostrate on her knees before that old carved im- 
age, very far from being fashioned after a beautiful 
model, and with a Missal in her hand, praying to it, in 
a most devout manner, the following prayer : 

" We fly to thy patronage, Holy Mother of Gi-od ; 

despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver 

s from all dangers, ever-glorious and blessed Virgin. 

Holy Mary, 

Holy Mother of God, 

Holy Virgin of Virgins, 

Mother of Christ, 

Mother of divine grace, 

Mother most pure. 

Mother most chaste. 

Mother undefiled. 

Mother untouched. 

Mother most amiable, 

Mother most admirable, 

Mother of our Creator, 

Mother of our Redeemer, 



•Hi , 
GQ 



kirwan's letters. 



105 



Litany of our Lady of Loretto. 






Virgin most prudent, 
Virgin most venerable. 
Virgin most renowned. 
Virgin most powerful, 
Virgin most merciful. 
Virgin most faithful, 
Mirror of Justice, 
Seat of Wisdom, 
Cause of our Joy, 
Spiritual Vessel, 
Vessel of Honor, 
Vessel of singular Devotion, 
Mystical Rose, 
Tower of David, 
Tower of Ivory, 
House of Grold, 
Ark of the Covenant 
Q-ate of Heaven, 
Morning Star, 
Health of the "Weak, 
Refuge of Sinners, 
Comforter of the Afflicted, 
Help of Christians, 
Queen of Angels, 
Q^ueen of Patriarchs, 
Queen of Prophets, 
Queen of Apostles, 
Queen of Martyrs, 
Queen of Confessors, 
Queen of Virgins, 
Queen of all Saints, 
'' We fly to thy patronage, Holy Mother of Grod, 
E 2 



106 

Garden of the soul. A conception. Some questioas. 

despise not our petitions in our necessities, tut deliver 
us from all dangers, ever- glorious and blessed Virgin. 

'' Pray for us, holy Mother of Grod. 

" That we may be made worthy of the promises of 
Christ." 

This, Sir, is extracted from a book now before me, 
called " The Grarden of the Soul, a Manual of Fervent 
Prayers, Pious Reflections, and Solid Instructions, cal- 
culated to answer the use of the members of all ranks 
and conditions of the Roman Catholic Church, etc. 
By the Right Rev. Dr. England, late Bishop of Charles- 
ton, with the approbation of the Right Rev. Dr. Hughes, 
Bishop of New York." And the above extract is from 
" The Litany of Our Lady of Loretto." Again I say, 
conceive of one of your own daughters praying this 
prayer from the Grarden of the Soul, prostrate on her 
knees before that black statue of Mary. Does not your 
heart revolt from the thought ? Would you not as soon 
see her bowing in a heathen temple, before a heathen 
idol ? "Wherein would be the practical difference ? 
Would you not feel humbled at being the father of a 
child that could be reduced to the performance of such 
a miserably superstitious and vainly repetitious service 
by the arts of priests ? And what would be your feel- 
ings of indignation toward a priesthood that could thus 
humble you by degrading your child? And it is to 
this low level that Romish priests, with all their appli- 
ances, and all their " deceivableness of unrighteous- 
ness," are seeking to reduce the youth of this land. 
One bishop writes the History of the Holy House — an- 
other bishop writes, or translates, the Litany of Our 
Lady of Loretto — and John Hughes, Bishop of New 



LETTERS. 107 



Imposture. How to be treated. A wish. 

York, approves the whole ! Have you. Sir, any lan- 
guage by v^hich to denounce the whole imposture as it 
deserves ? I have none, and will not, therefore, under- 
take it. But the men in clerical garb who could coun- 
tenance such fraud and superstition, should be esteemed 
and treated as we do the priests of Juggernaut, or the 
veriest impostors that live by defrauding the commu- 
nity. Such vile frauds, practiced by its priests, should 
sink Romanism as with the weight of a thousand mill- 
stones to the bottom of the ocean. Poor Dr. England 
has gone to the grave. Peace to his ashes. But Bishop 
Kenrick and Bishop Hughes are yet alive ; and the 
greatest harm I wish them is, that when the " Holy 
House" resolves on another flight across the Adriatic to 
Dalmatia, they may be in it as passengers. Judging 
from their books, they will not add materially to its 
weight, nor will they be any loss to our country. In 
their flight they may responsively repeat the " Litany 
of Our Lady of Loretto." 

With great respect, yours. 



108 

More sham miracles. Their absurdity. St. Anthony. 



LETTERXIII. 

Sham Miracles. — St. Anthony of Padua. — The Virgin of Modena.— 
Blood of Thomas a Becket. — Miracles of St. Patrick. — Miracles at 
Downpatrick. — St. Dagland's Grave. — The Boy exorcised. — Xavier's 
Miracles.— The wonderful Crab. — Priests not to be trusted. 

My dear Sir, — I am not yet through with the sham 
miracles of Romanism. You know the Romish Church 
claims the power of working mu-acles ; and the ahso- 
lute working of miracles is put forth as an incontro- 
vertible evidence of its being the only true Church. 
And to sustain the monstrous claim, no persons, save 
those who have waded through their lying legends, can 
have any conception of the stupendous absurdity of the 
miracles that are adduced. And if those already ad- 
duced — ^the blood of Januarius— Bambino— the Holy 
House of Loretto — ^patronized by popes, cardinals, bish- 
ops, kings, and nobles, and in the face of the world are 
so imspeakably absurd, how absurd must be those less- 
er miracles, palmed by wily priests on the lower classes 
of the people, and in the dark corners of the earth, 
where detection is not apprehended from the peering 
scrutiny of Protestant eyes ! Let me state to you some 
of these. 

St. Anthony of Padua was a giant in his day. But- 
ler gives an abstract of his life, which has been the 
theme of more than one credulous biographer. He was 
a man of eloquence ; and, while the rest of his body 



kirwan's letters. 109 

His tongue. A miracle. Mary of Modena. 

has returned to dust, his tongue was found, thirty -two 
years after his death, fresh, red, and incorrupt as when 
he was living, and is now kept in a most costly case 
in his church at Padua ! An unbeliever said one day, 
" If this glass does not break on dashing it against that 
stone, I will believe in Saint Anthony." He dashed it 
down, and it did not break ! The miracle was so ob- 
vious that he immediately believed ! Another infidel 
said he would believe if the dry slips of vines he held 
in one hand would bear grapes enough to fill the cup 
which he held in the other. Immediately Saint An- 
thony caused the dry vines to bear grapes ; they ri- 
pened in an instant, and produced as much juice as was 
required, and of the most delicious kind ! This infidel 
became a most devout follower of the saint. And by 
narratives of miracles as contemptible as these, the 
monkish life of this saint is filled ! 

Amid the Alps in Savoy, and near to the town of Mo- 
dena, there is an image of the Virgin that works many 
miracles, but nearly all of the same kind. It restores, 
on their presentation, dead-born children to life, just 
long enough to receive baptism, when they again ex- 
pire ! And there is abundant testimony to prove that 
such children, when presented to this image, open their 
eyes, stretch out their hands, and even sometimes make 
water ! But when baptized, all signs of life pass away ! 
What an image ! 

Who has not heard of St. Thomas a Becket ? He 
was for ages the great Thaumaturgus of England, and 
wrought more miracles than did the Savior and all his 
apostles. His blood, on his being put to death, was 
carefully collected, and possessed astonishing efficacy. 



110 kirwan's letters. 

Thomas a Becket. Miracles by his blood. 

It cured all diseases, and even restored the dead to life ! 
When the blood was found insufficient for the demands 
of the faithful, it was mixed with water ; and the least 
drop of water, if only tinged with the blood, possessed 
a healing efficacy. And water thus tinged with the 
blood of the rebel was sent out into all parts of the 
Christian world as an infallible cure for all kinds of 
diseases ! You full well know. Sir, what miracles of 
wickedness this Thomas of Canterbury committed 
while living, who vn*ought such miracles of power aft- 
er he was dead ! But we hear little of him of late ! 
Might not a revival of mkacles at his shrine now great- 
ly aid Nicholas Wiseman in subduing the iron obstina- 
cy of the English mind in its resistance to the blessings 
of Romanism ? Might not that remarkably acute and 
veracious historian, the " Yery Reverend P. R. Ken- 
rick, Y. G-.," in the exercise of his wonderful gifts as an 
antiquarian, bring something to light concerning Beck- 
et which, at this juncture, might have an effect of re- 
viving the faith which in om' land is so sorrowfully on 
the wane ? Such a work, especially if published with 
the approbation of the/^ Right Reverend Dr. Hughes," 
might have a most happy effect in arresting the stream 
of converts from Romanism to Christianity. 

The Irish, although a noble people in many respects, 
are peculiarly credulous and superstitious. The lower 
classes are generally Papists, and are exceedingly ig- 
norant ; and their faith in their priests, until within a 
few years, was unbounded. Hence sham miracles 
have been wrought there in greater numbers than, per- 
haps, in Italy itself. Jocelin's Life of Saint Patrick is 
now before me, as printed in Dublin in 1809, and in a 



kirwan's letters. Ill 

Jocelin's St. Patrick. His many miracles. 

cheap form for extensive circulatio];!. It contains little 
more than a detail of the miracles he wrought, some 
of which are of the most astounding character. Here 
are a few of them. Grormas was born blind. He was 
informed, in vision, that if he would, with the hand 
of the boy Patrick just baptized, make a cross on the 
ground, a spring of water would rise on the spot, in 
which, if he would bathe his eyes, he would immedi- 
ately see. He did as he was advised, and immediately 
saw ! And the spring is there to this day ! But which 
one of many springs it is, none can tell. 

Patrick went out to play on a cold day, and brought 
home some pieces of ice and cast them down. His 
imrse told him, chidingly, that he ought to have brought 
home some dry wood for fire. He took the pieces of 
ice, and, putting them together, prayed over them, and 
soon the ice was in a blaze ! Of course, the nurse was 
astonished, as she was in duty bound to be. Who 
would not be ? 

As he was playing one day, instead of minding his 
flock of sheep, a wolf carried off one of the lambs. In 
the evening he was scolded for his sloth and careless- 
ness. But he bore all patiently, and poured out his 
prayers for the restoration of the lamb. On the next 
morning, when he led the flock to pasture, the roguish 
wolf returned with the lamb in its mouth, and laid it 
at the feet of Patrick, and then fled to the woods ! 

Patrick fell into the hands of strangers, who sold him 
to a certain man for a kettle! ''How small a pur- 
chase for so precious a merchandise," exclaims Jocelyn. 
But the kettle would not boil when hung over the fire 
— the hotter the fire, the colder was the water in the 



112 

A wonderful kettle. A stone altar sailing. Foylge. 

kettle, until, in the midst of the flames, the water he- 
came ice ! The kettle was returned, and Patrick was 
taken hack, when the kettle hoiled as usual, and the 
saint was set at liherty ! 

When Patrick was returning from Rome, where he 
was made a hishop, as he was ahout emharking at a 
British port for Ireland, a leper hesought him to take 
him with him. He consented, but the sailors refused. 
So, casting into the sea " an altar of stone, that had 
been consecrated and given to him by the Pope," he 
ordered the leper to sit on it. And the stone sailed 
over the Channel as fast as the ship, and got into port 
with its passenger in perfect safety ! 

Rius was a very old man and a very great sinner. 
He promised Saint Patrick if he would restore him to 
the bloom, the freshness, and the joy of youth, that he 
would become a Christian. He prayed over him, and 
made the sign of the cross upon him, and he was re- 
stored to " beautiful youth," when he became a Chris 
tian. 

A very wicked man, named Foylge, one day killed 
the coachman of Patrick. The saint struck him dead 
by a word, and his soul went to hell. But the devil 
entered into the body of Foylge, and it walked about. 
In a few days the saint was passing a house where the 
soulless body of Foylge was : he ordered the devil to 
depart from it, when the body fell down, alive with 
worms ! It was immediately buried, as neither its 
sight or smell could be endured. 

And with such silly fables as these a book of nearly 
three hundred pages is filled ! And although the trans- 
lator will not vouch for the entire truth of all these 



kirwan's letters. 113 

Priests a curse. Scenes at Downpatrick. St. Dagland. 

miracles, and the priests may deny its authority, yet 
it is abroad among the people, and its narratives are 
believed by multitudes. Nor do I see any thing in the 
book any more incredible or ridiculous than the lying 
v^onders of the Bambino of Ara Coeli, or of the Holy 
House of Loretto, which are at this hour encouraged 
by the entire Papal court, and drawing vast revenues 
from every part of the Papal world. Can a priesthood 
which can palm such sublimated nonsense upon any 
people, have any object in view but theix degradation ? 
Can they be otherwise than a curse to them ? Can 
such priests be a blessing to America ? 

But Jocelin's book is not authentic — its miracles are 
not articles of faith ! Here is the door of escape for 
the priests. Why, then, not denounce it ? Why do 
priests aid in its circulation, while they make bonfires 
of the Bible ? And why permit things as bad, if not 
worse than any thing narrated in it, to be practiced 
under their eyes ? The grave of St. Patrick is said to 
be at Downpatrick, in the county Down, in Ireland. 
There also are the holy wells of purification. On Mid- 
summer eve of each year, the people resort to the grave, 
and fill their ears with its clay, and then rush to the 
wells, there to bathe, for the purposes of healing from 
all their maladies. And men and women, in perfect 
nudity, rush into the healing waters together ! And 
priests are present to hear confessions, and to receive 
their pennies from the beggar pilgrims to these holy 
places ! Is any thing in Jocelin worse than this ? 

The grave of St. Dagland is in Waterford. His stone 
coffin is filled with bones every year by miracle. On 
the 28th of June of each year, these bones are taken out. 



114 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

Old bones. The boy at Boyle. Xavier. 



and are borne away as precious relics, and as preserv- 
atives against various afflictions and diseases. These 
miraculous old bones are, of course, sold ! They have 
no miraculous power unless they are paid for, and that 
pretty liberally ! Is any thing in Jocelin worse than 
this ? 

Within a short time, a poor boy, near Boyle, in Ire- 
land, went to a Protestant school. His mother gave 
a reluctant consent. This boy was chilled almost to 
death in a bog during a stormy day, and went home 
violently sick. A numbness pervaded his body, which 
medicine and time only could remove. The poor moth- 
er, thinking it was a visitation of heaven upon herself 
and child for permitting him to go to the Protestant 
school, sent for the priest. He conJfirmed her suspi- 
cions, and offered to cast out the devil that possessed 
the boy on the condition that he should not go again 
to the Protestant school. The conditions were agreed 
to ; and just as the boy was on the recovery, the priest 
exorcised the evil spirit, and he is now alive and well ! 
And I saw the poor, bare-footed mother of that boy, who 
submitted to the locking up of the mind of her child in 
ignorance, to secure the muttering of a miserable ex- 
orcism over him by a contemptible priest ! Is any thing 
in Jocelin worse than this ? 

Have you ever. Sir, read the life of Francis Xavier ? 
It was one of the classics of my youthful days. If you 
have not, will you permit me to ask you to glance at 
it — I do not ask you to read it. He wrought prodig- 
ious miracles, far surpassing in number and power those 
of the Savior of the world. He foretold future events 
— spoke unknown languages — calmed tempests at sea 



LETTERS. 115 



His miracles. Wonderful crab. St. Crab. 



— cured various diseases — and raised the dead to life. 
And although all performed in India, Dr. Milner, in his 
wonderfully ahsurd book, ^^ The End of Controversy," 
endorses them all. Permit me to narrate to you one of 
the miracles of this saint as a specimen of the rest. St. 
Francis had a most precious crucifix, which, in a voy 
age at sea, he lost overboard. He was inconsolable, 
and prayed for its recovery. Walking one day upon 
the sea-shore, he saw his lost crucifix coming toward 
him on the surface of the water ! He went down joy- 
fully to the water's edge, when a crab, holding the cru- 
cifix in his claws, paddled up to him, and most rever- 
ently laid it down at his feet ! But the credit of this 
miracle is due, not so much to Xavier as to the crab ; 
and, were I one of the court which makes dead men 
saints, who wrought miracles in attestation of their 
sanctity, I think I would find it difficult to decide be- 
tween the claims of Xavier and the crab for a place in 
the calendar. Might there not be a St. Crab as well 
as a St. Viar ? An old stone, much mutilated, was 
found with the letters S. Viar upon it. It was imme- 
diately supposed to be the grave-stone of St. Viar, who 
was immediately placed in the calendar. The lost 
pieces of the stone were found, and, when put together, 
the inscription ran thus : Prefectus Viarum, overseer 
of the highways. Yet St. Viar was not deposed. And 
what is in the way of having a St. Crab ? 

Now, Sir, are priests who practice such gross frauds 
as these — who, by sham miracles like these, seek to 
keep the yoke of Romanism upon the necks of the ig- 
norant in all lands — are such priests to be trusted, or 
in any form countenanced ? Are such priests fit to bo 



116 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 



Priest jugglers. Not to be countenanced. 

intrusted with the formation of the character of our peo- 
ple ? Is not every thing we hold dear in danger, just 
in proportion to the number and the influence of such 
jugglers and their adherents ? If, Sir, it were possible 
for you to write a book advocating these sham miracles, 
like Milner, or like the " Very Rev. P. R. Kenrick, V. G.," 
I have no doubt but that you would die of the disease of 
self-contempt. And what respect can you keep up for 
the priests that advocate them, or for the system of Ro- 
manism, of whose literature and faith they form so con- 
spicuous a part ? 

With great respect, yours. 



KIRWAN'S LETTERS. 117 

Relics. Foundation. Scala Sancta. 



LETTER XIV. 

Relics.— Scala Sancta.— Sancta Sanctorum.— Relics of Santa Croce- 
of St. Proxede— of St. Peter's— in Milan— in Cologne.— Sanctioned by 
the Church.— Made to Order.— That they should be true, not essen- 
tial.— Their Effects upon the People.— These Forgers of Relics un- 
fitted to be our moral Teachers. 

My dear SiRj — The spirit of Romanisin is the spirit 
'of human nature. Well considering the instincts of 
the fallen nature of man, it has built upon those in- 
stincts a system of superstition which towers to heaven, 
and which casts its dark shadow over all the earth. A 
regard for relics is a part of our nature. We cherish 
with fond affection any thing which serves as a memo- 
rial of parents, children, valued friends — of the great, 
the wise, the good, the heroic, who have adorned the 
race, and hlessed the earth hy their deeds. And upon 
this principle of human nature, in itself innocent, and, 
within due bounds, laudable, Romanism has built up 
a system of fraud, and falsehood, and imposture, which 
should unite the race in hissing it out of the world. 
Permit me to ask your attention, in the present letter, 
to the relics of Romanism. 

Near to the Church of St. John Lateran, and within 
the same inclosure, is a little chapel which contains 
the celebrated Scala Sancta, or holy stair-case. It 
contains twenty-eight white marble steps; and the 
priests inform us that this is the holy stair-casc which 



118 kirwan's letters. 



ki 



Transported by Angelo. Beggars. Luther. 

Christ several times ascended and descended when he 
appeared before Pilate, and that it was carried by an- 
gels from Jerusalem to Rome. At certain times it is 
covered with persons crawling up it on their knees, with 
their rosaries in their hands, and kissing each step as 
they ascend. I called at this place several times to see 
the devotees, but in vain. I went up and down the 
lateral steps without any to molest me, save a fleshly 
old monk, who sat as sentry facing the holy stairs, and 
who never failed to jingle a money-box in my face. On 
one occasion, two beggars offered to go up the stairs for 
me, in due form, for a paul eacL and to pray for me as 
they crawled up ; but it would look like simony, and I 
declined the bargain. On another occasion, I ventured 
to place my Protestant feet on the three upper stairs, 
when my valet was frightened into hysterics lest the 
people should know it, or I should be punished for sac- 
rilege. Resolved not to be cheated out of a sight I so 
long desired to see, I went there on a Friday afternoon, 
and the stairs were covered with people, mostly beg- 
gars, most devoutly crawling on their knees ; and when 
the ceremony was ended, going away in the highest 
merriment. But not a priest was there. As I gazed 
upon the revolting and superstitious scene, my mind 
recurred to that memorable day in the world's history 
when Luther ascended these stairs. " While going 
through his meritorious work," says D'Aubigne, " he 
thought he heard a voice like thunder speaking from 
the depths of his heart, 'The Just shall live bp faith, ^ 
These words resounded instantaneously and powerfully 
within him. He started up in terror on the steps up 
which he had been crawling : he was horrified at him- 



LETTERS. 119 



Made free. Sancta Sanctorum. Contents. 

self ; and, struck with shame for the degradation to 
which superstition had degraded him, he fled from the 
scene of his folly." From that hour he walked forth a 
free man ; and thus the fraud of the holy stairs, and 
the revolting, degrading superstitions there practiced, 
were promotive of the glorious Reformation. This 
grand incident gave those wooden-covered stairs more 
interest to me than all the legends of monkery and 
priestcraft concerning them. 

There is a vast amount of mystery and sacredness 
thrown around the little building which contains these 
holy stairs. Here are several apartments which are 
kept locked, and to which I sought admission in vain. 
At the top of the holy stairs is a room called the Sane- 
ta Sanctorum^ which is held in peculiar veneration. 
There is a picture of the Savior, by Luke, seven palms 
high, and an exact picture of him when twelve years 
of age ! There is the pen of the seraphic doctor, brought 
by an angel from heaven, and with which he wrote his 
works ! There is a feather from the wing of the arch- 
angel, which he dropped on the salutation of Mary ! 
There is a bottle of the milk of Mary ! There is a bot- 
tle of the tears which Jesus shed at the grave of Laz- 
arus ! And there is the cord which bound the Savior 
to the post when scourged ! And in the church itself 
are the heads of Peter and Paul, which, on certain oc- 
casions, are exhibited with magnificent parade. Indeed, 
St. John Later an is exceedingly rich in relics, as it ought 
to be, considering it is denominated " Mater et caput 
ecclesiarum." 

The Church of Santa Croce, in Grerusalemmc, is one 
of the great basilicas of Rome. It was built, it is said, 



120 kirwan's letters. 

Santa Croce. Helena. Many relics, 

by Helena, on the site of the residence of the brute He- 
Liogahalus, and of his successor Severus. It derives 
its name from the fact, or fiction, that Helena deposit- 
ed there a third part of the holy cross which she dis- 
covered on Calvary, and mixed with its foundation some 
holy clay from Jerusalem. This is the place where the 
" golden rose" of former days was consecrated ; hut it 
is now famous only for its large collection of relics. 
Near the chancel are two catalogues hung up for the 
perusal of all : one is a detail of the indulgences grant- 
ed to all who there worship, and the other is a list of 
its sacred relics. The list I saw myself, and give it, 
as translated by Seymour. It is very rich, and worthy 
of all attention. 

" Three pieces of the true cross, deposited by Con- 
stantino, and kept in a case of gold and jewels. 

" The title placed over the cross, with the writing in 
Hebrew, Grreek, and Latin. 

" One of the most holy nails by which our Lord Jesus 
was crucified. 

" Two thorns from the crown of our Lord Jesus. 

" The finger of St. Thomas, which touched the most 
holy rib of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. 

" The transverse beam of the cross of the repentant 
thief. 

'' One of the pieces of money supposed to be given for 
the betrayal of Christ. 

" The bodies of St. Caesarius and Anastasius. 

'^ The cord by which our Lord was bound to the cross. 

" The sponge which contained the gall and worm- 
wood. 

" A large piece of the coat of Christ. 



kirwan's letters. 121 

, List of holy relics. 

''A large piece of the vail and hair of the Virgin. 

*' Some of the clothing of St. John the Baptist. 

' ' Portions of the arms of St. Peter and St. Paul. 

^' Some of the ashes of St. Lawrence the martyr. 

^' A vessel of the balm in which the head of St. Vin- 
cent was dipped. 

'^ Some earth from. Calvary saturated with the blood 
of Christ. 

'-^ A vial full of the blood of Christ. 

^' A vial full of the milk of Mary. 

'^ A piece of the sepulchre of Christ. 

^' A piece of Mount Calvary. 

^' A piece of the place where Christ was smitten." 

To shorten this catalogue of wonders, I must omit 
the list of bits of stones from the various places men- 
tioned in the history of Christ. 

^^ Some of the cotton in which was collected the blood 
of Christ. 

^' Some of the manna which fell in the wilderness. 

'' Some relics of eleven prophets. 

'^ A portion of the rod of Aaron, that budded. 

'' A part of the head of John the Baptist. 

'' Some of the skin and hair of St. Catharine of Si- 
enna. 

'^A tooth of St. Peter. 

'^Atoothof St.aiordon." 

And then follows a list of some bones of a hundred 
and one apostles, prophets, martyrs, widows, and vir- 
gins ; and the whole closes up with " a hundred and 
thirty-seven cases of other relics of saints, both male and 
female, whose names antiquity has not distinguished." 
And those relics. Sir, are exposed, on certain occasions, 

F 



-I 

Exposed to adoration. St. Praxede. Other relics. 

by cardinals and bishops, for the worship and adoration 
of the vulgar! 

The following are some of the relics in the Church 
of St. Praxede, taken from the catalogue engraved in 
marble, and near the altar, where all can read it. 

^^ A tooth of St. Peter. 

^^ A tooth of St. Paul. 

" The chemise of the blessed Virgin Mary. 

" The girdle of Christ. 

'' The reed and sponge given to our Lord with gall 
and vinegar. 

" The swaddling clothes of Christ. 

" The coat without seam, belonging to our Lord. 

" Three thorns of the crown of thorns. 

" The tomb of the Virgin Mary." 

Then follows a list of the heads, arms, knees, thighs, 
cloaks of apostles, monks, martyrs, saints, and virgins, 
with which I will neither burden my page nor your 
memory. 

Even at the risk of disgusting you and my readers 
with these miserable relics, I will name a few more of 
them. In St. Peter's they show you the very pillar 
against which Christ leaned in the temple at Jerusa- 
lem — portions of the cross — Veronica's image of the 
Savior — ^the head of St. Andrew, and the spear of St. 
Longinus, presented by Bajazet. In St. John Lateran 
is the table at which the Lord's Supper was instituted. 
In the Mamartine prison they show a curious stone, 
covered with a grating to preserve it. It has a hollow 
on its surface. A soldier knocked down Peter, and his 
head fell on this stone, and made that deep hollow in it. 
Peter's head must have been quite hard ! At St. Pietre 



KIR WAN's LETTERS. ±2*3 

St. Peter's chair. Braz6n serpent. Scene at Cologne. 

di Vinculo they show the chain that bound Peter, and 
which was miraculously broken by the angel ! Filings 
from this chain have been sold at exorbitant prices, to 
be set in rings and breast-pins by the faithful ! In an- 
other church is a square stone of white marble, which 
was carried by angels through the air from Jerusalem, 
on which the Savior stood when he met the apostles 
after his resurrection, and bearing the marks of both 
his feet ! Around this stone beggars pray, and cover 
it with kisses ! In Milan they show you the skeleton 
of Borromeo, gorgeously arrayed, and a vast supply of 
the teeth, nails, hair, and bits of skin of the apostles, 
put up in glass vials ; as also the brazen serpent which 
Moses made in the wilderness, and which Hezekiah 
caused to be broken in pieces ! These relics you find 
every where in Papal countries. In a box behind the 
altar, in the Cathedral at Cologne, they have the skel- 
etons of the three kings that worshiped the Savior, and 
the bones of the Magi ; and for six francs you are shown 
these old bones, by a jolly beadle, for the good of the 
Church ! On the left, as you enter by a side door, and 
turn toward the altar, is a case containing Mary and 
Bambino, and, as is said, some most precious relics. 
This case I saw covered over with heads, and arms, and 
legs, and hearts, made of composition, as votive offer- 
ings for cures performed by the image and the relics. 
I saw a woman, and an old man, and a young girl dis- 
eased in the eyes, bowing before this case, while some 
females were scrubbing the stone floor and screaming 
at the top of their voice, and some boys were playing 
hide and go seek around them. But enough of tlii* 
horrible wickedness of the priests, and gross ignorance 



124 

Sanctioned. Are these true relics. 



and superstition of the people. I feel humiliated in 
even penning these terrible evidences of the enormous 
wickedness of Romanism and its priests. 

But you will ask, Are these things sanctioned by the 
Pope and his cardinals ? Sanctioned by them ! Why, 
Sir, they glory in them. And on set occasions these rel- 
ics are brought out by the Pope and the cardinals, and 
are exposed to the populace with magnificent pomp, who 
bow and prostrate themselves before these old bones, 
old coats, old wood, and old stones, more profoundly 
than they ever do before Grod ! 0, Sir, could you be 
present at the exhibition of relics in St. Peter's — or in 
St. John Lateran — or in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, 
and witness the solemn pomp with which these relics 
are adored by Pope, cardinals, bishops, and the inferior 
clergy, you would never again think of the question 
whether or not they are sanctioned by the Pope and 
his cardinals ! 

But are these the true relics which they are repre- 
sented to be ? Impossible. Who can believe that the 
Holy House of Loretto — ^the blood and head of Janua- 
rius — the Bambino of Ara Coeli — ^the chemise of the 
Virgin — ^the bottle of her milk — ^the robe of the Savior 
— ^the bones of the saints, are what they are said to be ? 
When you push the keepers of these relics, they will 
admit that there is no certainty as to them. And, as 
in the case of the bodies of Peter and Paul, which are 
said to be under the great altar of St. Peter's, when you 
seek to find many of them, they are not there. Multi- 
tudes of the old cases and boxes which are shown you 
as the sacred deposits of relics, contain nothing — or 
nothing like what is represented. The thorns from the 
crown of thorns are iron nails — and the bones of the 



KIR WAN's LETTERS. 125 

Fit to be a priest. What motive ? Mr. Milner. 



saints are nothing but old bones collected from the Cat- 
acombs, and labeled for the market ! The man who 
can believe that that old feather is from the wing of 
G-abriel — ^that that old cloth was the chemise of the 
Virgin — ^that those old bones were those of the persons 
to whom they are attributed, is almost fit to be a Pa- 
pal priest ! He certainly is, if the other necessary 
qualifications are as strongly developed as his credulity. 
Indeed, he is fit to be a true yoke-fellow of the ^'Very 
Reverend P. R. Kenrick, V. G." 

But what motive can there be for such gross imposi- 
tions ? Motive enough for men who have no conscience, 
and who traffic in the souls of men. What would be- 
come of the monks of Ara Coeli without the wonder- 
working Bambino ? They would starve. These relics 
attract multitudes to their shrines, all of whom pay for 
the sight, and pay the priests in keeping, to say masses 
for their friends in Purgatory. Even English and Amer- 
ican Protestants spend tens of thousands yearly for a 
sight at these things, to laugh about them after they 
return home. And Rome is the great Relic market of 
the world. When a relic is needed for the sanctifying 
of a church in New York or Baltimore, an order is sent 
to the Holy City, and a relic is made to order. Nothing 
is needful but to take off" an old label from an old bone, 
or a dry piece of wood, or from an old piece of stone, 
and to put on a new one. And Mr. Milner informs us, 
that if our devotions are honest, it makes no matter 
whether or not the relic is what it purports to be ! ! If 
you send for a finger of Peter, and you are sent the 
finger of Pilate, it is just as good, if you are only sin- 
cere ! ! And who doubts it ? And when the boxes of 
acred bones in the Church of Santa Croce, to whicli 



125 KIR WAN 'S LETTERS. 



Relics enrich. The morale. Priestly reverence, 

antiquity has assigned no names, but to which priests 
now do, are exhausted, they are very easily supplied 
with bones just as old and as sacred. Indeed, these 
relics do more to enrich the Church of Rome, and to 
attract pilgrims and w^onder-hunters, than any other 
scheme which the priests have devised. By means of 
relics, the priests have converted the Catacombs into 
mines of gold. 

And what, you may ask, is the morale of all this ? 
Just such as you might expect. If no good can be rea- 
sonably expected from worshiping the glorious sun — 
or the beautiful moon, with her attendant stars — or the 
magnificent river, that waters and fertilizes the earth 
— or the statue of an old hero, that, by his prowess in 
war, fought his way to a seat on Olympus to quaff nec- 
tar with the gods, what good can be expected from the 
veneration or worship of rotten bones from the Cata- 
combs — of little splinters from the arms, the legs, the 
ribs, or the skulls of fabulous saints — of holy bits of 
skin — of the parings of holy nails — of little clippings 
of holy garments— or of pieces of old wood, or frag- 
ments of stones ? To ask the question is to answer it. 
But are these venerated or worshiped, you ask ? Gro 
to Rome, and to the Church of St. Peter's, and you will 
see, at '' the exhibition of relics," the Pope, cardinals, 
bishops, and priests kneeling and bowing before these 
things, with a reverence as profound as ever you saw 
manifested by a congregation of Irish Papists on what 
is called the elevation of the Host. The Pope and his 
entke court give, not merely an assent to the whole 
imposture, but are leaders in their veneration and wor- 
ship, and for the purpose of giving eclat to the wicked 
thing with the populace. And the whole effect upon 



LETTERS. 127 



Disastrous effect. Are these the teachers for us ? 

the minds and morals of the people is most disastrous. 
Grod is a jealous god, nor will he give his glory to an- 
other. Nor will he permit man, created in his own 
image, to give to the creature the worship which is his 
due, without causing the consequences of such wick- 
edness to follow him. And the worshipers of those 
old bones, and stones, and spears, and holy feathers, 
are just as moral as you might expect them to he ; and 
so are the cardinals and priests, who are the chief act- 
ors in the monstrously wicked farce. As I shall show 
you in the sequel, Rome is another Sodom. 

Now, Sir, in view of all this, whose truthfulness no 
informed person will question, permit me to ask you, 
whether Romanism is the form of religion suited to 
our American people ? Are these forgers of old relics, 
and promoters of their veneration, and who amass enor- 
mous revenues by their exhibition and sale, the best 
teachers of religion and morals for us ? Is the un- 
blushing effrontery of our imported bishop and priests 
to be quietly borne, who tell us that these forgers and 
worshipers of relics, and who, by the sale of old bones 
from the Catacombs as the bones of saints and mar- 
tyrs, defraud the world yearly of enormous sums of 
money, are the vicegerents of G-od, and that there is 
no salvation for us but by submission to their teaching 
and authority ? What ! no salvation for you or me 
save as we submit to that old Pope who bows in rev- 
erence and adoration before a box of old bones ! Mon- 
strous ! As well might they send you to learn patriot- 
ism from Arnold, or me to learn the religion of God 
from the priests of Baal. 

With great respect, yours. 



128 

Legends. S. Carlo. A scene there. 



LETTER XV. 

Legends. — Sabbath evening in S. Carlo. — Gorgeous scene there. — Le- 
gends from Butler — from Lives of English Saints. — Dr. Duff^s Testi- 
Tnony. — Foolish Legends of the Dark Ages revived. — The Religion 
of Legends not fitted for America. 

My dear Sir, — In the present letter I ask your at- 
tention to the legends of Romanism. Unless I greatly 
err in judgment, you will find in them another power- 
ful reason for the utter rejection of a system which 
lives ty fabricating and propagating them. 

My first Sabbath evening in Rome was spent in the 
Church of S. Carlo, in the Corso. I was attracted 
there, with others, to witness a high ceremony in hon- 
or of a saint whose name I now forget. The house was 
full, and in this respect was an exception to all I wit- 
nessed in Romish churches in Europe. It has three 
naves, divided by Corinthian columns ; the middle one 
was crowded with children of both sexes ; the girls 
dressed in white, with white vails most gracefully pin- 
ned on their hair, and flowing doT\Ti their shoulders. 
Each child held in her right hand a small stick, with 
a beautiful flower tied to it with a string, and in her 
left, a lighted candle. A forest of candles blazed on the 
high altar. The Litany was responsively sung by the 
choir and the congregation, and with grand effect. The 
appearance of the children, each holding their stick, 
flower, and candle, and all kneeling, rising, turning 



LETTERS. 129 



A priest. A cardinal. Explanation. 

round at the word of command, like little soldiers, was 
most interesting. Indeed, the whole scene was a gor- 
geous one. At a pause in the music, a long, lean Ital- 
ian priest — and, in these respects, an exception to his 
short and stall-fed brethren — ascended a desk, and, in 
a most furious style, poured forth a short address to the 
children. The music again struck up, and, at another 
pause, a fat and monkish-looking priest, from another 
part of the house, addressed them ; and, by their winks 
and smiles, the children seemed to enjoy the scene very 
much. Soon a movement was made to the left, and a 
pussy-looking cardinal made his appearance, headed 
and followed by priests and servants, bearing candles, 
a crook, and a cross ; and, puffing under the double 
weight of his fat and canonicals, he made his way to 
the high altar. Mass was soon said, for the evening 
was quite hot, and the congregation dispersed. " And 
what," said I to our attendant, " is the meaning of all 
this ? What was meant by that stick, and flower, and 
those candles in the hands of the children ?" " This is 

Saint 's day," said he. " The saint, when once 

going up a hill, was very weary, and he stuck his staff 
in the ground, and he leaned upon its top to rest. He 
prayed for some evidence from heaven that he was in 
the right way ; and his dry stick instantly bore a beau- 
tiful blossom ! To commemorate that miracle was the 
object of the stick and flower in the hands of the chil- 
dren. And the candle was an emblem of the light of 
holiness reflected on the world by his life." Not un- 
derstanding Italian, ''What," I asked, " said those loud 
preachers to the children ?" '' They told them of the 
many wonders wrought by the saint, and exhorted them 

F2 



130 kirwan's letters. 

Legend defined. St. Agnes. St Egwin. 

to venerate him and to follow his example," was the re- 
ply. Here is a foolish legend, that I myself saw com- 
memorated by a cardinal and many priests ; and such 
legends form a great part of the religious literature of 
Romanism. They are published by authority, and have 
a prodigious influence upon the ignorant Papists of all 
nations. Permit me to detail a few of them, remem- 
bering that " a legend is a story told respecting the 
saintsP Some of these I have already detailed in my 
letters to you on sham miracles. 

A man who insulted S^. Agnes was struck blind by 
a flash of light. On being brought to the young virgin, 
she immediately restored him to sight. She wrought 
many mkacles. S^. Anthony was often assaulted by 
the Devil in human form, was often beaten by him un- 
til almost dead, but always came off* victor. He cured 
many diseases ; but was especially famous for the cure 
of that disease which has taken his name, 'VSt. An- 
thony's fire." &t. Gudule^ whose relics are in the 
church of that name in Brussels, lighted her candles by 
her prayers. Might she not have understood the pro- 
cess of making lucifer matches ? St.Theodosius often 
miraculously supplied his many guests with provisions, 
and a woman was miraculously healed of a cancer by 
the touch of his garment. A general, going to war with 
the Persians, begged his hah* shirt, and, wearing it in 
battle, gained a great victory, '' by the protection of the 
saint through the pledge of that relic." St, Egwin^ 
going on a pilgrimage to Rome, put on his legs iron 
shackles, and threw the key into the Severn ; but he 
found it in the belly of a fish in Rome, which enabled 
him to take off" his shackles. The miracles of St. Hi- 



LETTERS. 131 



St.Placidus. St. Romuald. St. Scholastica. 



lary fill a whole book. &t, Placidus fell into a lake, 
and was carried out by a current into deep water ; St. 
Benedict saw this in a vision, and sent out St. Maurus 
to save him ; Maurus walked upon the water without 
sinking in the least, and drew him to shore. St, Ma- 
carius made a dead man to speak, to convince an unbe- 
liever of the truth of the doctrine of the resurrection. 
The relics of St, Francis of Sales raised to life two per- 
sons that were drowned, and have cured the blind and 
paralytics. St. Romuald drove several devils out of his 
cell who were scourging him, by mentioning the name 
of Jesus, and calmed a tempest on the sea, and wrought 
many miracles. His order of monks wear a white robe, 
the idea of which was suggested to him by seeing them 
going up a ladder to heaven in white. He died in the 
year 1020 or 1030, and his body remained perfect as 
late as 1466. His relics have wrought wonders. St, 
Richard cured his son by laying him at the foot of a 
great crucifix, and his relics have wrought miracles. 
St, Stephen told others their secret thoughts, wrought 
many miracles, as also did his relics. St, Scholastica 
was the sister of St. Benedict. They met one day, and 
the sister insisted that her brother should spend the 
night with her. But the rules of his monastery forbade 
him, and he refused. She prayed the Lord to stop his 
going away, and immediately a most fearful storm 
arose, which compelled him to remain. The sister died 
in a few days after, and Benedict saw her soul from 
Mount Cassino going to heaven in the form of a dove ! 
St. John of Egypt was a prophet, foretold future 
events, and did wonders. He gave eyes to a blind girl, 
and spent a night, in vision^ with a lady who wisliecl 



132 KTR WAN's LETTERS. 



The nun - nir I Bollandists. English saints. 

to see him in the flesh. He miraculously cured a man 
of the tertian ague by giving him a good vomit ! Thus 
many are cured of the ague in our day, and by doctors 
who are not likely to have a name in the calendar. 

There are, Sir, two huge volumes before me, contain- 
ing, in double columns, about one thousand pages each. 
They are " Lives of the Saints," by the Rev. Alban 
Butler, and were printed at the Metropolitan Press, 
Baltimore, in the year 1845. The legends here quoted 
are taken from these volumes, which have received the 
highest approbation of the dignitaries of the Romish 
Church, and which are crammed with just such stories. 
There is a saint or saintess, or several of both, for each 
day in the year, and the object of the volumes before 
me is to fornish to the faithful a little devotional read- 
ing for each day, for the purpose of kindling their de- 
votion, and exercising their faith ! The latter effect 
their perusal will most certainly produce ! And yet, 
for the sake of his English and Protestant readers, But- 
ler omits many miracles of the saints exultingly nar- 
rated by the Bollandists, the Jesuit compilers of the 
Acta Sanctorum, which, without being completed, al- 
ready consists of nearly sixty folio volumes. 

To show you that, the greater the absurdity, the great- 
er the faith, I will produce a few more of these legends, 
as quoted from the " Lives of the English Saints." If 
you or I disbelieve them, or smile at them, v/e are very 
gravely told that it is because '^the natural man dis- 
cerneth not the things of the spirit," or because of ''the 
intellectual darkness caused by three centuries of her- 
esy." This, Sir, is not the ravings of superstition with 
multitudes, however you or mv readers may smile. 



LETTERS. 133 



St. Frodobert. Pranks of demons. An old mill. 

The saints were greatly tormented by demons. St. 
Frodobert was often stopped by one, when going to 
school. He drove him away with the sign of the cross. 
When at prayer one night, a devil put out his candle. 
Another used to steal the bread of St. Auratus. An- 
other broke the bell of St. Benedict, with which, when 
living on a rock, he used to ring for bread. Another 
cast down part of a rock to kill St. Auratus in his cell ; 
but the saint made it stop half way down the precipice. 
Many female devils used to tempt the saints to sin, but 
always in vain. What a pity their power of resistance 
was not transmitted, by a kind of apostolic succession, 
to the cardinals and priests of Rome. St. Julian, St. 
Tozzo, St. Grail, St. Maximin, slew dragons. St. Samp- 
son killed several. St. Senan made a very small can- 
dle burn a whole week. St. Faro made instantly whole 
a cup broken by his servant. St. Aicardus hung up his 
gloves on a sunbeam. St. Fintan, expecting company, 
and having no flour for bread, ordered an old mill, which 
had neither wheat nor water, to supply him, and it went 
right to work and did so. St. Tillo, on finding that his 
monks had no wine to give him, filled their barrel by 
miracle. I wonder if this was the beginning of that 
strong relish for wine for which the monks are famous 
even to our day ! The reapers of St. G-enevieve were 
greatly incommoded by rain. She came out and ordered 
it away, and it obeyed. St. Grildas and his companions 
took up their abode on an island inconveniently small. 
It miraculously expanded to accommodate them. St. 
Mochua and his companions sailed over a river on his 
cloak. St. Cannera walked over the sea. St. Barras, 
sailing in a ship, met St. Scothinus walking over the 



134 kirwan's letters. 

Scothinus. Telegraph ±)eaten. Piles of trash. 

Irish Channel. He asked the samt on what he was 
walking. Scothinus replied, ^' On a beautiful green 
meadow." And when Barras denied this, he plucked 
a handful of fresh flowers, and presented them to him. 
But Barras turned his own logic against him, by thrust- 
ing his hand into ,the sea, and drawing it up full of fish- 
es. And long before rail-ways, or telegraphs, or ocean 
steamers were invented, the above Scothinus usually 
went from Ireland to Rome in a day, transacted his 
business there with his holiness in the evening, and 
was back the next morning. The Holy Virgin ap- 
peared to St. Alphonsus Liguori in the Church of Fog- 
gia, and was seen by all with the beautiful face of a 
girl of fourteen ; and so fervent was he once in pray- 
ing to her, that he rose up in the air, where he remained 
suspended for some time. He must have been made 
of light material. St. Ita, finding a man dead, w^ith his 
head cut off*, put it on again, restored him to life, and 
sent him about his business. And St. Cronon caused 
a wild beast, which had killed and devoured a man, to 
cast him up, and then restored him to life. And with 
legends like these, which are published even in our day, 
for the edification of poor, hood- winked Papists, I could 
fill volumes. These, Sir, are taken indiscriminately 
from the piles of trash before me, and are by no means 
the worst of their kind. But the miracles of the saints, 
when living, dwindle into insignificance, both as to 
number and magnitude, in comparison with those per- 
formed by their old bones when dead. 

And are these monstrous and contemptibly silly le- 
gends now out of date, and disregarded by the people 
and priests ? Far from it. The report of the speech 



LETTERS. 135 



Dr. Dulf s statement. Xavier's New Testament. 

of the apostolic Dr. Duff, which I heard him make be- 
fore the British and Foreign Bible Society, at its last 
meeting, is now before me, in which he makes the foL 
lowing statements : " There is circulating a work in 
India entitled The History of Christ. And what do 
you think it consists of ? Ten thousand legends, more 
monstrous than what is to be found in the Talmud. 
And this has been circulated, in the name of truth, as 
the history of our blessed Lord and Savior. And it is 
a notorious fact, that when the great Emperor Agbad 
had, in his tolerance, invited men of all religions to 
come to him, the celebrated Xavier, the Jesuit, went 
to tell him what Christianity was. The emperor's 
mind was open to the reception of the truth from all 
quarters, and he was really dissatisfied with Moham- 
medanism. Xavier reasoned in this manner : ' Here 
is a Mohammedan ; he must be saturated with Mo- 
hammedan legends. If I tell him the plain truth, ac- 
cording to the simplicity of the Bible, he will nause- 
ate the whole thing, because of its simplicity ; I must 
therefore fix up Christianity to suit his taste.' And 
he manufactured a New Testament for him, filled with 
all manner of Persian legends, and represented this to 
the emperor as the New Testament. The emperor read 
it, and, with the simplicity of heart and sagacity which 
belonged to him, returned it, saying, ' If this be your 
Shaster, I have enough of such legends already, without 
coming to you to get more.' " And, Sir, wherever the 
missionaries of Romanism go in the propagation of that 
faith — whether to the Indians of our own woods, to the 
islanders of the Pacific, to the savages of Africa, or to 
the more refined idolaters of India — ^they pursue the 



136 K I R W A N ' S LETTERS. 

No Bibles. Romish sermons. Suited to as. 

precise course of Xavier at the court of Agbad. Dr. 
Duft' testifies that, among the converts to Romanism in 
India, not a leaf of the Bible has been circulated for 
three hundred years, while these utterly despicable le- 
gends are circulated there without measure or end. 

And when, Sir, you hear an occasional sermon in a 
Romish church, what is the topic of discussion ? Ev- 
ery day in the year is a saint's day ; some days have 
many saints allotted to them. Is it not generally a 
harangue upon some saint — ^his wonderful miracles — 
and the whole twisted into an argument to prove that 
the Church of Rome is the only true Church, out of 
whose pale there is no salvation? Did you ever hear 
an Irish priest preach on St. Patrick's day? If not, 
embrace the first opportunity ; and if you will not hear 
of St. Patrick sailing on a flag-stone, it is because the 
priest recognizes you among his hearers, and as one 
more afflicted with the terrific disease of judging for 
yourself than the rest of them. And I am credibly in- 
formed that the chief topics upon which the priests 
dwell in the chapels filled with the poor Grermans and 
Irish, even in America, are the legends, not merely as 
found sifted out in the volumes of Butler, but as nar- 
rated, in all their grotesqueness, in the huge folios of 
the BoUandists. 

Now, Sir, as one having as much at stake as any 
other man in this nation — as one adorning its present 
history, and as truly desirous of its future glory, per- 
mit me to ask you whether you think these legends 
form the best religious literature for our people ? . Is 
it that best calculated to instruct and to ennoble the 
mind ? Does not such trash oppress the mind ? Does 



LETTERS. 137 



Faith in these things injurious. Priests believe them not. 

not belief in it enfeeble its powers and debase the man ? 
Will not the people that believe these things believe 
any thing ? And can they be fit material out of which 
to make Republicans, and noble defenders of free insti- 
tutijns ? Are the priests that write and circulate these 
legends worthy of trust ? They can not believe them 
themselves, and they write and propagate them for the 
very reasons that Xavier wrote a New Testament to 
suit the Emperor Agbad. The volumes of Butler are 
printed in your city, by the Bishop's press. They ^re 
sold, as the illustrated title-page informs us, '^by all 
the Catholic booksellers in the United States." If 
these legends are disbelieved by your bishop, why per- 
mit his press to print them ? Why wink at their uni- 
versal sale in the country ? Why not raise his voice 
against them ? That Romish bishops believe these le- 
gends themselves is impossible ; but they amaze the 
ignorant, overwhelm them with wonder, foster their 
superstitious regard for nunnery and monkery — for 
bishops, abbots, and hermits — for signs of the cross, 
holy wells, and relics — and for those means devised by 
a wicked priesthood for the purpose of keeping the Jiight 
of Life from the minds of the people. When, Sir, the 
religion of the Bible is supplanted by the religion of 
legends — when the sturdy Protestantism, that thinks 
for itself, is supplanted by that religion that gives up 
all thinking to the priest — ^when the twenty-two or 
three millions of people who, in our happy land, will 
believe only on evidence, is supplanted by a people 
who will believe all the lying legends of Romanism — 
then the last rays of the glorious sun of our liberty 
are fading away on the summit of our mountains. 



138 

Liberty's midnight, Rome's high noon. 

The midnight of liherty is the high noon of Roman- 
ism ; and the deepest darkness of despotism is the par- 
adise of the priest. 

With great respect, yours. 



139 

Not the worship of God. Various kinds of worship. 



LETTER XVI. 

The Mass not the Worship of God. — A theatrical Exhibition. — Wal 
densian Church in Turin.— High Ceremonies of Rome all theatrical 
— Feast of the Nativity. — Visit of the Wise Men. — Procession of 
Palms. — Judgment-hall of Pilate. — Procession at Bonville. — Sab 
bath evening Service in Edinburgh. — Popish Plays and Play-actors 
not suited to America. 

My dear Sir, — I hope that by this time your mind, 
and those of my readers, are prepared for the conclu- 
sion to which my own has long since arrived — that 
Romanism is not Christianity ; and that its priests, 
whatever else they may he, are not the ministers of 
Christ, nor of his glorious G-ospel. If this conclusion 
is just, another immediately follows : neither is its wor- 
ship the worship of God. If not prepared for this con- 
clusion now, you may he at the close of the present 
letter, in which I shall endeavor to establish its truth. 

The Scriptures speak of various kinds of worship ; 
as, the worship of God — the worship of idols — ^the wor- 
ship of the dragon and the beast — and the worship of 
devils. And we find various kinds of worship in the 
world, and under various forms. Some truly worship 
Grod in spirit and in truth — some worship idols — some 
devils — some mammon — some are '^ will worshipers" 
— and some worship ^'they know not what;" but all 
is in vain, save that of '^ the circumcision, which wor- 
ship Grod in spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have 
no confidence in the flesh." Acceptable worship cm- 



140 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

Acceptable worship. The Mass. What is it ? 

braces the outward homage, and the inward feeling ; 
but the external act is nothing, save as it expresses the 
sincere internal feeling ; for they who worship Grod 
must worship him in spirit and in truth. True wor- 
ship is not confined to places, occasions, or persons ; 
wherever the heart bows in humility before Grod, for 
the purpose of exalting his glorious name and perfec- 
tions, there he is truly worshiped. And, as G-od is the 
father of all men, all men have access to Him for them- 
selves, through his Son. All this, is plain. 

The worship of Romanism consists mainly in the 
Mass. There are missals, and penances, and prayers 
for private use ; and there are high ceremonies for cer- 
tain feasts and great occasions ; but the Mass — the 
mass mumbled over in the same way in Connaught, 
Paris, and Rome, and with the same sleepy, unvary- 
ing monotony, is that which makes up the public wor- 
ship of the people. Now what is the Mass ? is it wor- 
ship ? I unhesitatingly say it is not ; that it has no 
more claim to be the worship of G-od than had the 
ceremonies of Pagan priests at the altars of Pagan 
Rome. At best, it is only a theatrical representation 
of the truths which it purports to exhibit. And hence. 
Bishop England, and other Papal writers, talk of the 
'' performance of the mass," as we ordinarily speak of 
the performance of a tragedy or a farce. And the Mass 
holds precisely the same relation to the history of Christ 
which Richard III., Henry VIII., John II., or any other 
of the historical plays of Shakspeare do to the charac- 
ters and times which they represent. This even a su- 
perficial anatomy of the Mass will render quite evident. 

As the sensuous encroached on the spiritual in Chris- 



LETTERS. 141 



/ieligious tragedies. Priests dress symbolical. 

tianity, and as the shades of that long night called 
" the Dark Ages" thickened over our world, all the ten- 
dencies of religion were to the outward. The Bible 
was soon confined to cloisters, and it became the inter- 
est of priests to keep it there. To keep up the great 
facts of our religion in some way before the people, por- 
tions of sacred history were dramatized, and acted be- 
fore the faithful. And this system, somewhat modified 
in different countries to suit the different states of civ- 
ilization, exists at the present day. To see the system 
in full operation, you must go to Rome, where the 
tragedy and the farce are performed in gorgeous style. 
But I must return to the ^^performance of the Mass," 
in which, " under the appearance of bread and wine, 
the Redeemer of the world is offered up in an unbloody 
manner, as a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for 
the living and the dead." According to Dr. England, 
the altar signifies Christ — the white cloth that covers 
it, " the purity which should accompany Christ" — and 
the vestments of the priests are to remind us of the pas- 
sion of Christ. The alba represents the white garment 
in which Herod clad the Savior — ^the cincture reminds 
us that Christ was bound — the maniple hanging upon 
the left arm, reminds us of the weight of our sins as 
borne by Christ — the stole on the priest's neck and 
crossed on the breast, represents the obedience of the 
Son of G-od — the chasuble^ or outward vestment, with 
a hole in the centre for the head, with a cross embroi- 
dered on the back, and two stripes representing a pillar 
on the front, reminds us of Christ bearing the cross. 
When the priest is thus dressed up, he is prepared for 
acting. The wafer and wine are then brought out — 



142 kirwan's letters. 

Theatrical representation. Waldensian church. 

they are turned into the body and blood of the Lord, 
by the priest — then, as real Christ, he is offered as a 
victim to Grod on behalf of the people — then the victirp 
undergoes a destructive change, to show the death of 
the Redeemer — then the elements are separated, tho 
real body is seen under the appearance of bread, and 
the real blood under the appearance of wine, and the 
priest eats the one and drinks the other. Then the 
people are dismissed, if true believers, wonderfully edi- 
fied and instructed — if not, smiling at the credulity of 
those who can believe that there is any worship in all 
this ! This is the Mass ! Now, Sir, if this is any thing 
but a theatrical representation of the death of Christ, 
with little meaning and less sense, in which the altar 
is the stage, the priest the chief actor, the people the 
spectators, and the church the theatre, what is it? 
And when, as in high mass, the dramatis personse are 
multiplied, and opera singers are brought in to give at- 
traction to the various scenes, the conclusion is irresist- 
ible that, instead of being engaged in the worship of 
G-od, you are actually witnessing a theatrical exhibition. 
Never did I feel this to such an extent as in June 
last, when, after weeks spent amid the mass-houses of 
France, and Naples, and Rome, I entered, on a pleasant 
Sabbath morning, the extremely plain and primitive- 
looking church of the "Waldenses, in Turin. On look- 
ing around me, instead of pictures, and statuary, and 
frescoes, I found all the walls presenting to the eye some 
passages of Scripture. On looking before me, instead 
of an altar blazing with candles and gilding, I saw a 
neat pulpit, with a large open Bible, and a minister of 
Gfod reading and expounding it. Instead of persons 



I4y 

The transition. Nativity. Feast of the wise men. 

gazing around with guide-books in their hands, talking, 
and criticizing, and smiling, I saw a devout people, 
with Bibles in their hands, turning up the text, and 
the passages read, and most devoutly singing Grod's 
praises, and joining in the prayers that were offered ! 
The sight and the scene were truly refreshing to a mind 
jaded, and a heart disgusted with all I had witnessed 
for the few previous weeks. The transition seemed 
like passing from Purgatory to Paradise. Here was 
worship in spirit and in truth, while the gorgeous and 
heartless ceremonies of splendid cathedrals were a mere 
acting, and by wretched actors, of truths and things 
which neither priests nor people understood. 

And this theatrical aspect of the Popish ritual is yet 
more apparent, if you pass from the Mass to the cere- 
monies of some of the high days of the Church. Sey- 
mour, in his Pilgrimage to Rome, has made this quite 
obvious as well as ludicrous. In St. Maria Maggiore, 
in Rome, they profess to have the cradle in which the 
Savior was laid at his birth, and at the feast of the Na- 
tivity they bring out that cradle, before the dawn of 
day, and, amid processions of priests, monks, nuns, pre- 
ceded by incense, accompanied by singers, and guard- 
ed by soldiers, it is placed on the high altar for the 
view and worship of the faithful ! And, after all, the 
wonderful cradle is only a splinter of old wood, covered 
with silver, and in a case of glass, and said to be a 
part of the manger ! And the theatrical acting of the 
Nativity attracts its thousands ! 

The visit of the wise men of the East to the Savior 
is acted out in the Church of Andrea della Vallc with 
great scenic effect. Mary, with her son on her knee, 



144 



KIRAVAN'S LETTERS. 



The inti'oduction. Palm trees. Judgment-hall. 

is seated on a throne — the Magi, transubstantiated into 
kings, dressed with crowns and purple, are introduced 
to her, and, after acting the parts assigned to them, re_- 
tire. And as a reward for their labor and homage, she 
gives them some of the milk on which the Savior was 
nourished, and which they carry away as a precious 
relic ! 

The feast to commemorate the strewing of the path 
of the Savior with branches of trees is yearly celebrated 
with great pomp at St Peter's. The Pope, magnifi- 
cently arrayed, is carried into the church on the shoul- 
ders of eight men, attended by his court. The priests 
bring him palm-trees, which he blesses and sprinkles 
with holy water. Then the cardinals, bishops, priests, 
and foreign ministers receive from his holiness a palm, 
some kissing his hand, and others his foot. Then the 
procession of palms commences, and the whole is ended 
by high mass ; after which, thirty years' indulgence is 
granted to all who witness the ceremony ! And from 
the beginning to the end of Holy Week, all the cere- 
monies, by day and by nighty are nothing but repre- 
sentations, in a theatrical form, of the sufferings of our 
Lord, about whose true history the people know far less 
than do those of the history of England, who know 
nothing of it but what they learn from witnessing the 
actings of the historical dramas of Shakspeare ! 

If further evidence is necessary as to the theatrical 
character of the Romish worship, permit me to quote 
from Seymour his account of the ceremony of Holy 
Week, which represents the judgment-hall of Pilate. 
" The Gospel is read by three priests. One of them per- 
sonates the Evangelist who wrote the G-ospel ; and his 



LETTERS. 145 



The acting. Choir. Tawdry shows. 

part is to read the narrative as detailed. A second per- 
sonates Pontius Pilate, the maid at the door, the priests, 
the Pharisees ; and his part is to read those sentences 
which were spoken by them. The third personates our 
Lord Jesus Christ ; and his part is to read the words 
which were uttered by him on the occasion. To give 
the greater effect to the whole, the choir is appointed 
to undertake those parts which were the words of the 
multitude. The different voices of the priests reading 
or intoning their different parts — Pilate speaking in 
one voice, Christ in another, while the choir, break- 
ing forth, fill the whole of the vast church with the 
shout, ' Crucify him ! Crucify him !' and again with 
the cry, ' Not this man, but Barabbas !' produce a most 
singular effect. Accustomed as we are to look upon 
the Holy Scriptures with reverence, and to read the 
narrative of our Lord's sufferings with a profound feel- 
ing of awe, it has something repulsive to our tastes, if 
not to our judgments, to find a theatrical character 
given to so holy an exercise." 

Upon this evidence, which might be multiplied to 
any extent, I rest, Sir, my position, that the ritual of 
Romanism, however splendid, and to some weak minds 
attractive, is not the worship of Grod ; that, at best, it 
is only a theatrical representation of the truths which 
it purports to exhibit. Every thing that enters into 
the public worship of Romanism is only a continuation 
of the tawdry shows gotten up in the Middle Ages to 
satisfy the longings of the religious nature of man, 
from whom a wicked priesthood had taken away the 
Light of Life. And how can we measure the wicked- 
ness of ecclesiastics who, even amid the light of our 

G 



146 kirwan's letters. 

The poorest actora going. Scene at Bonville. 

advanced civilization, take av^ay the Bible from the 
people, and seek to supply the vast void by theatrical 
forces like these ? And is it any wonder that, in Pa- 
pal countries, the iew join the priest at the acting of 
the Mass on Sunday morning ? and that the priest joins 
the multitude to v^itness the acting of the farce in the 
theatre in the evening ? It is at least an evidence that, 
if nothing else is left to the people of Naples, they have 
left a little remaining taste, as, while the churches are 
deserted, the theatre is crowded. The least interest- 
ing actors that are seeking for precedence in the dra- 
matic world are lazy and lubberly priests, and they are 
the least worthy of patronage. 

On the 19th of June last, in company with others, I 
reached the little town of Bonville, within a few miles 
of Greneva, on my way to Chamouni. Crowds of peo- 
ple were in the streets, and branches of trees graced 
all the doors and windows. It was a fete day, but in 
honor of what saint I know not ; probably the " Very 
Rev. P. R. Kenrick, V. Gr.," might inform us. I there 
witnessed a scene such as I had not seen before — quite 
theatrical in its way. At the ringing of a bell, a pro- 
cession was formed at the church of the village. It was 
headed by women in white robes ; these were followed 
by children bearing baskets of rose-leaves ; these by 
children bearing censers ; these by priests ; these by a 
ruby-faced bishop, fat and stall-fed as usual, bearing 
the host under a canopy ; and the bishop by a vast mul- 
titude of people. The day was very hot and very dusty. 
At certain signs, the whole mass of people knelt down, 
and rose up, and turned to the right and left. At the 
sound of a little whistle, the children scattered leaves 



LETTERS. 147 



Soldiers. Host saluted. Sabbath evening at Edinburgh, 

for the bishop to walk on, or incensed the priests. The 
soldiers were in the streets in great numbers and in 
full uniform. They saluted the Host with volleys of 
musketry on its approach ; and when the bishop stopped, 
as he did several times, and turned round the Host so 
as to face the soldiers, they all fell on their knees in an 
instant, save the officers, who leaned on their swords, 
with their faces to the earth. After parading the 
streets in this way for some time, the bishop and priests 
returned to the church, and the people and soldiers 
went to drink and to play. When the farce was end- 
ed, the town was a scene of revelry. And with such 
mountebank exhibitions as these, the Papal world is 
full ! And these exhibitions are what they call wor- 
ship ; and a firm belief in their efficacy is what priests 
call faith in Grod ! 

Now, Sir, that you may see, in contrast with all this, 
the true worship of G-od, go with me on the first Sab- 
bath evening I spent in Scotland to the Graelic chapel 
in Edinburgh, which is situated almost under the 
shadow of the Castle. The house was crowded in all 
its parts. In the hymns of praise the immense con- 
gregation united. Every worshiper carried a Bible, 
and turned to the Scripture read, and to the text of 
the sermon. When prayer was made, every person 
rose and took a devotional attitude. Dr. Candlish was 
the eloquent preacher ; and for upward of an hour did 
the people hang with breathless attention upon his lips, 
while he expounded to them the faith of Abraham, and, 
with words that burned, exhorted them to the exercise 
of faith in Grod. And when the service was ended, the 
multitude quietly walked away, praying that the word 



148 kirwan's letters. 

Which is divine worship. Priest and minister. 

of the Lord might dwell in them richly, and that they 
might be sanctified through the truth. Now, Sir, 
which looks most like the worship of Grod — ^this scene 
in the G-selic chapel, or the saying of mass by a priest ? 
"Which looks most like Peter at the feast of Pentecost, 
or like Paul in the synagogues of the Jews — the Scotch 
minister preaching the Grospel, or the Italian priest 
saying mass ? Which of these teachers is best adapt- 
ed to our people and our institutions ? Which is most 
likely to foster those principles that never yield but to 
the right — -that will live only for the true ? Sir, the 
one is a teacher of the truth, the other is an actor of 
the truth dramatized. Italy and Naples have only 
Popish actors — Scotland and England have religious 
teachers ; hence the difference between their people ! . 
Mexico and Peru have had only religious actors for 
their people — New England has had religious teach- 
ers ; hence the difference between them ! The priest 
seeks to bind you to the Pope ; the minister seeks to 
win you to God. The priest hides the Bible, and seeks 
to satisfy you with the mass and the other ceremonies 
of the Church ; the minister puts the Bible into your 
hands, and exhorts you to be satisfied with nothing less 
than a heart and life conformed to its teachings. The 
priest damns you unless you believe the Church, which 
means the Pope and his cardinals ; the minister tells 
you that " he that believeth in the Son hath life," and 
exhorts you to believe in Grod — to fear him, and then 
to fear nothing else. Which are the men ordained of 
God, and best fitted to be the moral instructors of our 
great and growing country? Need I answer these 
questions to satisfy a person of your sense and compre- 



LETTERS. 149 



Romish Churches Sabbath theatres. 



hension ? Sir, Grod is not worshiped in the mass. Ro- 
mish churches are Sabbath-day theatres for the enact- 
ing of Popish dramas ; and Romish priests are nothing 
more or less than actors in sacred dramas, and most 
of them miserable hands even at that. Neither the 
plays nor their actors are the things for our people, 
unless the Bible, with its institutions, and the freedom 
which they secure, are a curse ; and unless submission 
to the priest and the Pope, and the slavery which they 
insure, are a blessing. From such play-actors and their 
plays may the good Lord deliver us. Could the proph- 
ets, apostles, martyrs, and saints, of all ages and climes, 
hear us, we would invoke the aid of them all to save 
our land from the curse of Romanism. 

With great respect, yours. 



150 

Tested by its fruits. Where to be tested. 



LETTER XVII. 

Romanism tested by its Fruits in Rome. — No personal Liberty there — 
two Cases in Proof. — No security of Property — two flagrant Illustra- 
tions. — No Religion there — no Sabbath — no Bible — no Preaching- 
no worshiping Congregations — no serious Devotion there. — Is Popery 
the best form of Religion for our Country ? 

My DEAR Sir, — If the work of framing a government 
for a people were committed to your hands, and if you 
were in douht as to which form would best promote 
their highest and truest interests, what plan w^ould you 
adopt to resolve your doubt ? You would adopt the 
common sense one, of testing the various forms that 
presented themselves by the effects which they pro- 
duce, where fally established. This would be walking 
in the light of experience. The best fruits of Despot- 
ism you would seek in Russia and Austria — of a Lim- 
ited Monarchy, in England — and of a Constitutional 
Republicanism, in the United States. And as an hon- 
est man, you would decide in favor of that form which 
promoted, in the highest degree, the highest interests 
of the masses of the people. So in religious things. 
If desirous to know the influence of Episcopacy upon 
a people, you would go to England — or of Presbytery, 
you would go to Scotland — or of Independency, you 
would go to New England — or of Popery, you would 
go to Rome. As trees are known by their fruit, so are 
political and religious systems by their effects. By 



151 

The Holy City. Information sought. No liberty. 

this test, to which none can object, will you permit me 
to try Romanism, that you and all men may see the 
multiplied blessings which we may anticipate from its 
full establishment in this land ? But where shall we 
apply the test ? Where, but in Rome, the seat of the 
Pope — -the centre of unity — the paradise of the priest 
— where the heresy of the Reformation has never ob- 
tained a permanent or impressive influence, and where, 
for fifty ages together, Romanism has had the molding 
of the people, without let or hinderance, in her hands. 
If Papal priests could have their wish and their way, 
they would, of course, model America after the pattern 
of Rome, which Cardinal Wiseman denominates the 
^^Holy City." Now, Sir, I have been to the '^Holy 
City" — I have seen its Pope, cardinals, and priests — I 
sought there information as to its civil, social, and re- 
ligious state — and from personal examination, and from 
testimony received from the most credible witnesses, 
both natives, and foreign residents, I am prepared to 
say that, from the extent of its population, there is not 
a worse governed, less religious, or more immoral people 
in Christendom. And, tried by its priests, where there 
are no obstacles to prevent its natural results, Roman- 
ism should be the abhorrence of all flesh. 

There is. Sir, no personal liberty in Rome. Since 
the return of the Pope from Naples to the Vatican, the 
reins of despotism have been tightened by a powerful 
hand. The patriots that could escape have fled ; and 
you find them in Genoa, Turin, Greneva, France, and 
Britain — homeless, yet hopeful exiles — strong in faith 
that the sun of liberty will yet rise, even over Rome. 
The suspected are in prison ; and the prisons are crowd- 



152 

Siics. How they work. An instance. 

ed. Spies, by day and by night, surround those who 
show any lack of confidence in the priests. While I 
was there, the plan was completed of dividing the city 
into small sections of about twenty families each, and 
of placing a priest over each of these sections ; nomin- 
ally to look after their religious wants, but really to act 
as the spies of the government ! And through the 
vigilance of these spies, and the information which they 
wring from wives and daughters, and servant- women 
at the confessional, the sigh breathed after liberty by 
the most obscure man in its most obscure and humble 
dwelling is reported in a few hours to the head of the 
police ! And if a Roman desires to visit other coun- 
tries, before he can get permission, he must first get a 
certificate from the magistrate of his district that he 
is a good citizen — ^then from the priest of his section, 
that he is a good Papist: with these he goes to the 
head of the police, and if there is no information lodged 
there against him, he receives a passport. Take one 
occurrence as an illustration. A young Eoman, a few 
years since, went to Sardinia, where he married. Busi- 
ness failed him, and he returned to Rome to seek em- 
ployment, leaving his wife and children behind him. 
He entered the emplojrment of a person who, in the 
Revolution, took part against the government. Within 
the present year, that man wished to return to his fam- 
ily, and with the certificate of the magistrate of his 
district, and of the priest of his section, he presented 
himself to the head of the police, who, I learned, is a 
priest. And simply because he was recorded as hav- 
ing been in the employment of an enemy of the old 
government, instead of getting his passport he was or- 



153 

Tobacco monopoly. Peter Ercolo. 



dered to prison ; and where imprisoned none know but 
G-od and the priests ! 

Take another instance and illustration of the glorious 
liberty with which Romanism would bless us ! The 
government holds a monopoly in tobacco, and this mo- 
nopoly it farms out to the highest bidder. The more 
tobacco used, the greater the duties accruing, and the 
higher the Church can sell the monopoly. Of course, 
the more the Romans chew, smoke, and snufF of the 
vile weed, the greater will be the profits of the Church. 
Knowing this, and to curtail the revenues of the priests, 
those who bear no fervent love to them agreed to re- 
frain from its use, and to induce their friends to do the 
same. One evening Peter Ercolo met his friend Luigi 
Geuanini in a coffee-room, smoking a cigar, and per- 
suaded him to smoke no more. There were several 
by-standers ; soon Ercolo was arrested — was tried be- 
fore the Second Tribunal, and found guilty of the crime 
of persuading his friend to consume no more cigars ; 
and for this crimte a respectable man, between thirty 
and forty years of age, was torn from his family, and 
sentenced for twenty years to the galleys ! And I read 
the sentence as placarded on the chief corners of the 
city of Rome, and as signed by Cardinal Antonelli ! 
Such, Sir, is the civil liberty enjoyed by the dwellers 
in the '' Holy City," amid the relics of the martyrs, and 
under the direct government of the vicar of Jesus Christ, 
and the infallible head of the only true Church ! And 
this is the liberty with which Romish priests, were it 
in their power, would bless our country ! It is from 
those Roman tyrants that our priests get their author- 
ity — it is to them they yield their conscience, and swear 

G2 



154 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 



Patriots questioned. Property insecure. An instance. 

perpetual allegiance. Are they the men for our people ? 
Ask the patriots in exile — ask the patriots rotting in 
the prisons of the " Holy City" — ask Ercolo, tugging at 
the galleys for persuading his friend to cast away the 
end of a wasted cigar, are the spies and tools of Italian 
priests the men for our country ? . 

Nor, Sir, is there any security for property in Rome. 
It is constantly confiscated, on the merest pretexts, to 
the Church ; and when not confiscated, it is alienated 
to the " Holy See" in a great variety of ways. Two 
instances, in proof of this, were narrated to me there, 
and by a man of high position. A Roman of wealth 
married a lady of foreign birth, and by whom he had 
a large family of children. After a life of love and har- 
mony, he died, leaving his property to his widow and 
children, by a will duly authenticated. Although re- 
gardless of the priests in health, he sent for one when 
dying — who confessed him, and anointed him, and 
'' fixed him off"" for Purgatory or Paradise. A few days 
after his death, that priest swore before the tribunal 
having jurisdiction in such cases, that the dying man 
confessed to him a great sin, and to atone for which he 
wished his entire property, contrary to his will, to go 
to the Church. And, on the oath of that priest, the 
will of the deceased was set aside — ^his property was 
turned into the treasury of the Church, and his widow 
and children were turned out penniless on the world ! 
Thus nothing is necessary to deprive any family in 
Rome that has lost its head, of its property, but the oath 
of a priest ! And if you had seen them in crowds, as 
I have, you would conclude, as I have, that it would 
be an easy matter to get a priest in Rome that would 



'S LETTERS. 155 



The illegal son. Shameless mother. No religion. 

swear any thing. Absolution from perjury that en- 
riches the Church is easily secured. 

The other instance is as follows. It would seem as 
if there is a law in Rome which gives all property to 
the Church which has no lawful heir. An old man, 
of large possessions, married a young and handsome 
lady, and died, leaving a son behind him, the heir of 
his possessions. Just on the eve of his majority, not 
many months ago, a suit was instituted to prevent his 
entering on his paternal possessions, on the ground of 
his illegitimacy. And the Church gained the suit — 
the mother of the boy testifying to her own shame, and 
confessing that the father of her child was a shaven- 
pated, crimson-capped cardinal ! ^^ And this," said my 
informant, as we turned out of the Corso, '' is the pal- 
ace in which the old man died, and of which his widow 
and repudiated child have just been deprived." And 
when men lose not their property by confiscation, or by 
the robbery of ecclesiastica^l courts, they are ground 
down into poverty by an enormous taxation for the 
support of a Church which only compensates them 
with swarms of monks and nuns, splendid churches, 
lying legends, gorgeous processions, French soldiers, 
and spies to dog them by day and by night. And are 
these prie&ts the men for our country ? Ask that wid- 
ow and her orphans deprived of her property by the 
oath of a confessor — ask those groaning under the yoke 
of a government the most detestable that the earth 
knows, whether these are the men for our country I 
They will soon tell you. 

Nor, Sir, is there any religion in Rome, I do not 
mean to say that, among its thousands of ecclesiastics, 



156 KIRWAN's LETTERS. 

No Sabbath. Monks at market. No Bible. 

there are none that love G-od, nor do I mean to say- 
that the Lord has no chosen ones hidden amid the chalBF 
and the trash that are every where visible there ; but 
I do mean to say, and to affirm as strongly as language 
can do it, that among the masses of the priests and 
people there is no fear of Grod, and no knov^ledge of the 
doctrines of our religion. And how could there be, in 
the absence of the means instituted by heaven to sus- 
tain and to extend religion among a people ? 

There is no Sabbath in Rome. The only apparent 
difference there between the Sabbath and other days 
of the week is, that the shops are more gayly dressed 
— the markets are more full— and more people are 
engaged in buying and selling. On my way to St. 
Peter's from the Hotel d'Angleterre, I saw monks and 
priests in all the shops and markets, buying, as on oth- 
er days, and chattering like magpies. In Naples the 
shops are closed, and all business suspended on feast- 
days, but on the Sabbath all busmess is brisker than 
usual. Romianism knows no Sabbath. 

There is no Bible in Rome. I made many inquiries 
there for a Bible, but without success. The people 
have no Bible. They know nothing about it. An in- 
telligent man of fifty told me that he never saw one. 
Multitudes of the priests know nothing about it. And 
when asked why they have none for sale, the booksel- 
lers will tell you that it is prohibited. Captain Pack- 
enham, once a banker in the oity, and a most respect- 
able gentleman and devout Christian, is now in banish- 
ment for circulating the Scriptures there during the 
short existence of the Republic. Much of true religion 
consists in knowing Grod and Jesus Christ; and how 



157 

No preaching. No congregations. Exceptifn^. 

can they be known by a people from whom the Bible 
is excluded ? 

There is no preaching in Rome. Now and then, a 
foreign priest or ecclesiastic visiting there, in search of 
a pallium, or of a cardinal's hat, may get up a brief 
course of lectures for the edification of the strangers win- 
tering there ; but these are usually vain and ambitious 
men, who seek in this way to gain favor at court, and 
to promote their self-interests. There is no preaching 
to the Italians ; and when there is an occasional ex- 
ception to the rule, it is not the Grospel that is preached : 
it is either a eulogy upon some Popish saint, or a ve- 
hement harangue against the Reformation and Protest- 
ants. Popery treats as a nullity the ascending com- 
mand of the Savior, ^'Gro ye into all the world and 
preach the Gospel to every creature." This one crime. 
Sir, is enough to subject it to the curse of ^'Anathema 
Maranatha." 

There are no worshiping congregations at Rome or- 
dinarily. Crowds attend the high ceremonies of ' ' Holy 
Week ;" on great occasions, when there are gorgeous 
processions, at which the Pope and the military attend, 
multitudes are drawn together by curiosity ; but, on 
ordinary occasions, there are no congregations to wit- 
ness the ceremonies in the churches. In this I was 
greatly disappointed. The only exceptions I witnessed 
were at St. Carlo, in the Corso, and around the image 
of Mary, in St. Augustin, as already narrated. On Sab- 
bath day, and on every day of the week, I was at the 
great basilicas and churches, and very often myself and 
company were the whole congregation ! I witnessed 
the mass in St. Peter's, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Mag- 



158 

Last Sabbath morning. Scenes at St. Peter's. 

giore, performed by a bishop and many priests, when not 
a soul was present to form a congregation but my own 
little company. My last Sabbath morning there was 
spent between the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's ; and 
while mass was going on at several altars in the church, 
it would be a liberal calculation to say that there was 
an average of five persons at each altar. This was in 
the morning ; the miasses and vespers of the afternoon 
are literally deserted, unless where singing is expected. 
Indeed, where there is any religion at all among the 
people, it is usually of a vicarious character. The 
faithful leave the care of their souls to the priests ; as 
a man sometimes commits his business to an agent, 
with powers of attorney to act for him. And they 
think, and truly, that the masses offered at the altars 
will be as efficacious in their absence as if they were 
present. Hence there is often a crowd of priests en- 
gaged in a ceremony without a soul to witness it. And 
what struck me as more singular still, was to see priests 
in St. Peter's on Sabbath day entering the beautiful 
chapels during the ceremony of the mass -at their al- 
tars with guide-books in their hands, and criticizing 
the works of art by which they are adorned ! Could 
they do so if they believed that a brother priest was 
creating God before them ? 

And I was amazed at the manner in which those 
who attended performed their devotions. Two girls 
will enter, and kneel together, and cross themselves ; 
and it is truly ludicrous to see them alternately pray- 
ing, and talking, and laughing. Persons upon their 
knees, and their lips moving very rapidly, repeating 
their prayers, have often eyed me from head to foot, 



LETTERS. 159 



Spanish oflScer. No religion. Solemn queetion. 

and gazed on me as I went around the church. Every 
thing I saw among priests and people was chillingly 
heartless, save in an old Spanish officer, who daily vis- 
ited St. Peter's, dressed in half uniform, with his sword 
dangling behind him. I saw him a few times on his 
knees, and he seemed really to pray, and to beat his 
breast with his hand, as if he felt the weight of some 
awful sins pressing upon his soul. I felt an anxiety 
to say to him that the blood of Christ cleanses from all 
sin. 

Now, Sir, in the absence of the Sabbath — in the ab- 
sence of the Bible — in the absence of the preaching of 
the Grospel — in the absence of congregations even from 
the ceremonies with which the priests seek to fill up 
the void left by the prohibition of the Word of G-od, how 
could there be any religion in Rome ? Grod has de- 
vised means to ends ; and when the means are not 
used, the ends are not attained. Sir, there is no relu 
gion in Rome, There is there blind superstition — 
there is Jesuit cunning — there is solemn pomp and 
ceremonial observances — ^but there is no religion. Nor 
is there, as a rule, in any country where Popery ob- 
tains among the masses. 

Is Popery, then, the form of religion best adapted to 
our country ? The foundations and bulwarks of our 
institutions, are the intelligence, the religion, the morals 
of our people ; can these remain to sustain and to de- 
fend our institutions if Popery becomes the religion of 
our people ? Let the past answer. 

With great respect, yours. 



160 

How could religion get into Rome. Idolatry* 



LETTER XVIII. 

Fruits of Romanism. — Idolatiy in Rome. — A Prodigy. — Pictures of Maiy 
— her Names and Worship. — Immorality of Rome. — Scene at Naples. 
— Key to priestly Profligacy. — Experience of Luther. — Mass for the 
Soul of Gregory XVI. — Vespers in the Sistine. — Cardinals — their 
Character. — Feelings of the Romans toward the Priests. — A Chat at 
Civita Vecchia. — Romanism detested at Rome. 

My DEAR Sir, — -In my last letter I commenced the 
work of testing Romanism loj its fruits at ho7ne, that 
you and all men might see whether its propagation 
should be encouraged among the nations and people 
yet heyond the cncle of its influence. I have shown 
you that in Rome, where the system culminates, where 
it has every thing in its own hands, there is no personal 
liberty — ^no security of property — no religion. There 
is in Rome no Sabbath — ^no Bible — no preaching of the 
Grospel— no worshiping congregations — ^no serious de- 
votions ; and how can religion exist in the absence of 
these ? But I am not yet through with the fruits of 
Romanism at home. There are a few other statements- 
I wish to place before you. 

There is. Sir, the most gross idolatry in Rome. On 
this point I need not dwell, after what I have said al- 
ready about the Bambino of Ara Coeli, the Virgin of 
St. Augustin's, and the relics which are to be found 
every where. You meet there, wherever you go, mi- 
raculous pictures, and wonder-working relics, and stat- 
ues that came down from heaven, and places rendered 



161 

Images worshiped. Snow in summer. Pictures of Mary. 

sacred by prodigies ; and before these pictures, relics, 
and images, you see poor people bowing down with as 
profound a homage as ever the Hindoos render to their 
idols. The priests may disguise or excuse this as they 
may; it is, after all, no less than idolatry. ^'You are 
here on holy ground," said our guide, when walking 
through and round the church of St. Maria Maggiore. 
''What makes it holy," I asked. ''Because," said he, 
"Grod showed where the church should be built by 
covering its site two feet deep with snow in summer !" 
And this he said with a stolid gravity which would 
mak€ it a sin to suspect him of quizzing. I turned to 
my " G-uide of Rome" to see if there was any allusion 
to this prodigy, where, to my amazement, I read the 
following passage : " This church was built in the year 
352, under the pontificate of St. Liberius, in conse- 
quence of a vision that he and John the Patrician had 
the same night, and which was confirmed the follow- 
ing morning, the 5th of August, by a miraculous fall 
of snow, which extended over the space which the 
church was to occupy : for this reason it was called St. 
Maria ad Nives." And you can scarcely turn a corner 
without meeting with a place which has some sacred 
and prodigious history like this. May not this be the 
reason why it is called the "Holy City." For similar 
reasons, Mecca and Medina are "holy cities." 

The pictures and statues that most abound, and to 
which most resort in prayer and prostration, are those 
of the Virgin Mary. Indeed, what the Prophet is to 
Mohammedanism, the Virgin is to Romanism. To hor 
are given names which belong only to God. She is 
called "Mother of God" — " Advocate of Sinners" — 



162 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

Naraes and honors. Lyons saved. Rome immoral. 

^^Refage of Sinners" — "Gsite of Heaven" — ^'Most 
Faithful"— '^ Most Merciful." And in the Psalter of 
David, as reformed by Bonaventura, we find this sen- 
tence : ''Come unto Mary, all ye that are weary and 
heavy laden, and she shall refresh your souls." Church- 
es are built to her honor — ^her shrines are crowded with 
devotees, and are hung with votive offerings. Her 
name is the first which the infant is taught to lisp, 
and the dying are directed to look to her for mercy. 
The soldier goes to battle under her banner, and the 
brigand plunders under her protection. In Italy and 
Spain, robbers w^ar a picture of Mary hung round their 
neck by a ribbon. If overtaken suddenly by death, 
they kiss the image, and die in peace. And while 
apostles, martyrs, saints, and relics are not forgotten, 
Mary is the divinity of Romanism. The city of Lyons 
erected a pillar to Mary for saving it from the cholera 
of 1832. "When Pio Nino fled jfrpm Rome, he threat- 
ened the city with the vengeance of Mary : finding her 
rather tardy in her movements, he prayed France for 
aid, which, being more propitious than Mary, sent him 
forty thousand bayonets ! Why, Sir, while Mary is in 
the mouth of every body, the common people do not 
know enough about Jesus Christ even to swear by 
him. Mary is to the Romans what Diana was to the 
Ephesians. Romie, as a city, is given to idolatry. 

Rome is, emphatically, an immoral city — ^probably 
the most so in Christendom ; and that notwithstand- 
ing it has an ecclesiastic of some kind for every thirty 
inhabitants ! There are some statements which I blush 
to make on this head, and which I only make out of 
an imperative sense of duty. I wish every American 



kirwan's letters. 163 

Gambling priests. Theatre at Naples. A key. 

citizen to know the blessings to be expected from Ro- 
manism when the system is fully established and de- 
veloped among us. 

In the broad street opposite the post-office, in Na- 
ples, I saw a priest at ten o'clock in the morning at a 
gambling table ! The sight astounded me, as I then 
witnessed it for the first time ; but my guide soon put 
me to rest by stating that the priests were among the 
most, expert and successful gamblers in the city ! The 
theatre of St. Carlo, in Naples, was opened on the king's 
birth-day. Without entering it, I went with my trav- 
eling friend and our valet to the porch, to see the Ne- 
apolitans in their gay attire, and to have a glimpse of 
the royal family. Of the men that went to the ballet, 
for such it was, the largest number were soldiers, the 
next largest were priests. There is no mistaking a 
priest in Italy. He is known by his regimentals ; and, 
if naked, his shaven crown would reveal him. I was 
again astonished ! Soon, however, familiarity dimin- 
ished my wonder ; and when, on a more full informa- 
tion, I saw that the only relation of the priest to re- 
ligion was that of a formal and official kind, like that 
of a magistrate to the laws, I also saw that there was 
nothing to bind him to a moral life, or to submission 
to the moral law, beyond that which binds a civil mag- 
istrate. This is the key to much of the priestly profli- 
gacy to be found in Papal countries. Boys are devoted 
to the priesthood from youth — they are brought up for 
it — the doctrine of moral fitness is unheard of. They 
enter it under but one restriction — not to marry ; but 
they may do any thing else. As some magistrates 
are excellent men, so are some priests ; but the priest 



164 kirwan's letters. 

Luther's experience. Masses for the Pope. Why ? 

can do with impunity any thing which a magistrate 
can. 

It was the experience of Luther, that the nearer he 
got to Rome, the more wicked were the priests and 
people. And writing from there a few days after he 
entered it, and while saying mass at its altars, he said, 
''It is incredible what sins and atrocities are commit- 
ted here ; they must be seen and heard to be believed ; 
it is usual to say here, 'If there be a hell, Rome is 
built above it ;' it is an abyss from which all sins pro- 
ceed." And although centuries have passed away since 
the noble Saxon penned these lines, I am persuaded 
that they give, so far forth, a true picture of Rome at 
the present hour. 

You, Sir, will remember, that on the death of the 
late Pope Grregory, masses were ordered for the repose 
of his soul all over the Papal world. In many places, 
and, no doubt, in the cathedral of your city, these 
masses were celebrated with great pomp. The order- 
ing of these masses gave rise to many questions among 
Protestants ; I confess it staggered myself. The repose 
of the soul of the vicar of Jesus Christ ! of the holy 
Pope Gregory ! What should disturb the repose of his 
soul ? "What did he do to disquiet his spirit after it 
shot the gulf w^hich divides time from eternity ? "If 
you take five minutes' walk," said a friend of mine, 
long a resident of Rome, to me one day, "I will in- 
troduce you to tw^o fine young girls, the daughters of 
the late Pope !" I then fully understood why masses 
were ordered for the repose of his soul! Perhaps you 
may not know, Sir, that it is quite a common occur- 
rence for the Popes to leave behind them many "neph- 



165 

Pope's children. Ceremony in the Sistine. Secretary of State. 

ews" and '^ nieces," the names by which their illegiti- 
mate offspring are designated. But so it is. Their 
progeny is not counted by units. And the example 
set by pontiffs, the cardinals, and priests, are not slow 
to copy. 

I went one day to the Sistine Chapel to vespers, 
when the Pope and nearly twenty cardinals were pres- 
ent. He who has once seen there the entrance of the 
cardinals, each with his servant untwisting his robe — 
their kneeling before the altar, and their servants ad- 
justing their robes while kneeling — ^their bowing to the 
altar and to one another — ^their taking their seats with 
their servants at their feet, and assuming a most de- 
votional look — ^their leaving their seats to salute the 
Pope, with their scarlet robes trailing behind them, can 
never forget the sight ! 0, Sir, how every idea of the 
infallibility of these persons passes away, like the hoar 
frost before the sun, on witnessing the silly ceremonies 
they practice in the Sistine ! If you should see twenty 
children going through these ceremonies, you would 
conjecture that they were keeping holiday on the 1st 
of April. I sought to read the cardinals, and I think 
I did read some of them. ^'Who," said I, "is that 
youngish man, with that dark, penetrating, cold-look- 
ing eye?" ''That," said rny guide, ''is the Cardinal 
Secretary of State." I need not name him here. He 
heads the horrible clique, in whose hands the present 
Pope is but a puppet, and will be probably his success- 
or. Now and then these men in scarlet turned up 
their eyes, and moved their lips quite fast, and put up 
their hands after the manner of little Samuel in the 
picture ; but all was obviously to be seen of men. 



166 

Character of cardinals. Of the Pope. No confidence. 

''What," said I to a friend, who knows them well, 
''what is the moral character of these cardinals?" 
His reply astounded me. "It is to me amazing," said 
he, "that some of these men can keep up even the 
form of devotion in the presence of one another, when 
each knows that the other keeps three, four, or five 
mistresses. Some of them are the greatest debauchees 
in Rome ; they go. Sir, from the bed to the altar, and 
from the altar to the bed. I know what I say. I have 
mixed and mingled with these persons. I have heard 
wicked and loose young men talk in my day ; but the 
most loose and lewd conversation I ever heard in my 
life was from these men." "And is this the general 
character of priesthood here?" said I. "I am per- 
suaded it is," said he, "except the Pope, who is a pure- 
minded man, and who would do better, and make oth- . 
ers do better, if he could." He then went on to state 
that the priests are the corrupters of the people, and 
mainly through the confessional and the women. " No- 
ble Romans," said he, "have told me, with tears, that 
because of the lewdness of these priests, and their way 
of ferreting out every thing at the confessional, they 
have lost confidence in the virtue of their wives, their 
mothers, their sisters, and their daughters. Domestic 
love and confidence, as a rule, are unknown in Rome." 
So emphatic and terrific was the testimony of this 
person, that I went away, feeling that something had 
chafed his temper, and that he condemned all for the 
known vices of a few ; and it was not until I heard his 
testimony corroborated from all the sources at which I 
sought information that I could admit it to be true. 
Like sin and death, confession and seduction follow 

■i 



kirwan's letters. 167 

Chat at Civita Vecchia. An excited Italian. 

each other in Rome. The crimes are there rife that 
brought from heaven a rain of fire on Sodom. 

While sitting in the veranda of the hotel in Civita 
Vecchia, w^aiting for the steamer from Naples to car- 
ry us to Genoa, I got into conversation with a most 
intelligent Italian, who spoke English with fluency. 
'^Why," said I, ''do you not drive out these French 
soldiers?" as a parcel of them marched along to the 
tap of a drum. He replied, " We are not strong enough 
to drive out the rascals. But if Louis Napoleon is not 
elected — if a true republic is set up in France, that will 
recall these men, then we will have freedom." ''You 
have priests here, too," said I, as half a dozen of them 
were tripping along beneath us. "Plenty," said he, 
with excited emphasis, and gritting his teeth. "What 
good do they do you ?" I asked. " Much good," he re- 
plied, with a scornful toss of the head ; "they eat up 
a man's own property — they suck his own blood out of 
him — and they go with his own wife." And this, as 
far as I heard it, is the unbroken testimony of Italy 
as to the priest ; with one exception, and that was an 
American doing business in Rome, and he only as- 
serted that the above statements are too strong, and 
that things are better than they have been. "If we 
can only get these French away," said my friend in 
the veranda, "we will show you Americans what we 
will do." "And what will you do?" said I. He re- 
plied, in a most energetic under tone, "we will estab- 
lish an Italian republic, and the first thing we will do 
will be to kill ofi* these d — d priests, for they are the 
enemies of the people^ and the spies of dcspotism.^^ 
The next revolution in Italy will be a terrible one for 



168 



LETTERS. 



Terrible retiibution. Morality of the people. 

the priests. The people have a terrible retribution in 
store for them, and they know it. And hence the 
tightening of the chains of despotism, from the lines 
of Sardinia down to the Straits of Messina, and the 
stealthy meetings between the Pope and his most faith- 
ful friend, the King of Naples, the most cold-hearted 
and villainous despot upon earth, for mutual support, 
when the sleeping fires burst forth. And burst forth 
they will. 

If the morals of the clergy in Rome are such as we 
have described, what must be the morals of the people ? 
Depraved and low, according to all testimony, to the 
last degree. As by common consent, the marriage vows 
are disregarded ; and while externally every thing 
seems moral and decent, yet underneath there is little 
else than rottenness and putrefaction. I repeat it. Sir, 
there is no morality in Rome. Instead of being a 
^'holy city," it is a fermenting vat of corruption, and 
the priests supply the chief ingredients which produce 
the fermentation. A venerable professor of one of our 
American universities, with whom I traveled on the 
Mediterranean, stated that, but a few days previous to 
my meeting with him, a priest was taken up in Jordina, 
in Sicily, for having eight women in his harem, three 
of whom were married persons ! 

Of course, a state of morals like this among the 
priests, when connected with a grinding despotism, 
fi-amed and executed mainly by them, must make 
them and their religion despicable in the eyes of the 
people. And they are so, as is obvious from the de- 
serted churches that you find every where, and from 
the unanimous expressions of their sentiments by the 



169 

Romanism detested in Rome. A wonder. Who wants Rome's morals ? 

people whenever they can whisper them. There is, 
Sir, not a spot on earth where Romanism is more de- 
tested than in Rome — there is not a spot on earth 
where the Pope and his priests are more supremely 
contemned. If the people of Rome could only have 
their way, the Pope would be to-morrow in exile — ^his 
priests would he in the dungeons where patriots are 
now rotting; and the fabled chair of St. Peter would 
be at the bottom of the muddy Tiber, or ascending 
to heaven in smoke. And it is one of the most unac- 
countable anomalies of the dajr to see men so despised 
at home so favorably regarded abroad — to see men who 
can only retain their places at home by the aid of Swiss 
and French soldiery, claiming a universal dominion 
over the people and nations of Christendom, and par- 
celing out kingdoms among their spies and tools for 
Papal purposes. 

Is it. Sir, desirable to have the morals of Rome trans- 
ferred to New York and Baltimore ? If not, is it de- 
sirable that the priests, and the system which produce 
these morals, should be patronized among us? I am 
far from saying — indeed, I do not believe — that Rom- 
ish priests in this country are as immoral as they are 
in Rome. I believe they are worse in Italy than in 
any other part of the world. But may it not be owing 
to the fact that the keen eye of Protestantism is upon 
them? What will be their morals, or ours, when they 
have all things to their mind ? The Chinese say they 
find here a fine market for their worst teas — the French 
for their poorest silks — and the English for their worst 
manufactures. When fashions are worn out in Europe, 
they are often in full credit hero ! Must it be so with 

H 



170 

Americans putting on what Italians cast off. 

its religion also ? Is it to the credit of our country that 
she should be dressing herself up in the old, tawdry, 
moth-eaten garments of the old whore of Bahylon, 
which even the down-trodden Italians are casting in- 
dignantly away? 

With great respect, yours. 



171 

Avignon. Its curiosities. Mine host 



LETTER XIX. 

Avignon.— Hotel de I'Europe — mine Host. — Captain Packenham. — 
Elasticity of Romanism—the Pope — Priests. — Despotism of Roman- 
ism. ~ Friends of the Pope. — Neapolitan Catechism. — Priests the 
Watchmen of Despotism — their horrid Use of the Confessional — it 
should be the Abhorrence of all Flesh. 

My dear Sir, — On Friday, the 23d of May, I was 
landed in Avignon, famous in history as the old seat 
of the Popedom during the split that rent the Papal 
Church in twain. Myself and friend put up at the Ho- 
tel de I'Europe, a most comfortable and pleasant house. 
The attractions of this town to a traveler are the old 
Palace of the Popes, now a prison, with the old cathe- 
dral by its side, both built upon the top of a rock ; and 
the Museum, which is a curiosity in its way. On the 
side of the old palace is a tower upward of two hund- 
red feet high, the Tarpeian rock of Avignon, and from 
which multitudes have been cast down for summary 
death ! It is frightful to look at — it is frightful to think 
of the inhumanity that would cast even a dog down 
the dreadful steep! And after seeing its sights, and 
looking out from its towering cliff upon the winding 
Rhone that washes its base — the vine-clad hills every 
where visible — and upon the snowy mountains that prop 
the sky in the distant horizon, we returned to our hotel. 

Its keeper is a polite Frenchman, slender in person, 
witJi an intelligent eye, a thoughtful countenance, a 
pretty good knowledge of English, and quite chatty. 



172 kirwan's letters. 

Where do you go, Sir ? Adaptation. An exUe. 

After a few minutes of general conversation, he asked, 
in a pleasant manner, " Where do you go. Sir?" " To 
Rome," I replied. '^And he you a Catholique?" he 
asked. '^0 no," I answered, ^^I am a Protestant;" 
and immediately added, ''there are not many Catho- 
lics in America, save those who go there from Europe 
— ^the Catholic religion does not suit our institutions." 
"With that emphatic shrug of the shoulder peculiar to 
a Frenchman, and with a peculiar look and accent, 
which made me douht whether he spoke in faith or in 
fan, he replied, ''You do not understand in America 
the religion Catholique : it suits itself to all the insti- 
tutions in the world." This was certainly saying much 
for its gum-elastic properties, and it is true, with cer- 
tain restrictions. It makes perpetual war against the 
Bible and the simple institutions of the Grospel. With 
these exceptions, it literally becomes all things to all 
men, but with this one object steadily in view, that it 
may induce some to put on its yoke. But, because its 
devices are known, its power is broken. 

I met more than once in Sardinia and Switzerland 
the well-known Captain Packenham, to whom I had re- 
ceived an introduction from Sir Culling Eardley, a Brit- 
on by birth, a man of family and fortune, a philanthro- 
pist and Christian, and an exile from Rome and Tus- 
cany, where he resided many years, because of his dis- 
tributing in those places the Holy Scriptures in Italian ! 
But few men have had better opportunities of studying 
Popery at home, or of forming so true a judgment of its 
priests. And as we were walking together the streets 
of Lausanne, and as he was pouring forth the noble 
thoughts of his noble mind, and with all the ardor of 



LETTERS. 173 



Popery a police. Its elasticity. The Pope. 

a warm Christian heart, he uttered this memorable 
sentiment: ^' Popery^ Sir, is the police of despotism, 
and its priests are its watchmenP Never was the 
system and its priests more truly, briefly, or eloquent- 
ly characterized. The sentence is worthy of a place 
among the proverbs of the wise and good ; and you will 
permit me, in the present letter, to state to you a few 
things to prove and to illustrate the truth of the saying 
of mine host at Avignon, and of the exile of Rome. 

The gum-elastic properties of Romanism are obvious 
every where. Look at it from whatever stand-point you 
may, and you can not fail to see them. See these prop- 
erties as manifested by the Pope ! He is now a tem- 
poral prince — now the vicar of Christ — now glittering 
from his throne — now washing pilgrims' feet — lauded 
in America as a liberal, in Austria as a despot — to-day 
he is a shepherd of the sheep, and to-morrow, like Peter, 
a fisherman ; '' determined," in the language of an En- 
glish wit, ''to live by hook and by crook." There is 
not a state of things existing, nor is there one likely to 
arise, save the spread of the true Grospel, and the put- 
ting up of free, civil, and religious institutions in Cen- 
tral and Southern Europe, to which he may not extend 
or contract himself. His gum-elastic properties are 
wonderful. 

Look at its priests. They will multiply idols to suit 
a Chinaman — they will worship the Grreat Spirit to 
suit the Indian — they will preach up greegrees and 
charms to gain the Hottentot. They will syncln-onize 
with any form of error to make friends for themselves, 
or adherents to their system, or to raise barriers against 
the progress of the truth. They will laud the despotism 



174 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

Plastic priests. Who can know it ? Despotism. 

of Tuscany — ^they will consecrate the trees of liberty 
in Paris — they will shout hosannas to democracy in 
New York, and to the most despicable despot that lives, 
the King of the Two Sicilies, at Naples. They will 
preach up liberty of conscience in Baltimore — ^no lib- 
erty of conscience in Rome ; the freedom of the press 
here — no freedom of the press in Naples. They will 
flout the British ministry for protecting British subjects 
from their wiles, and they will curse the King of Sar- 
dinia for permitting a Protestant Church to be erected 
in Turin ! Sir, it is my deliberate conviction, that if 
upon the face of the earth there is a class of men more 
destitute of principle than another, or less to be trusted 
than another, it is the priesthood of the Romish Church. 
They are a sacerdotal company, disconnected. by the 
ordinary ties of humanity with their race, a close cor- 
poration, and with no principles but those which pro- 
mote their interest. " You do not understand in Amer- 
ica the religion Catholique," said my host in Avignon; 
and in the name of humanity, who can understand it ? 

And the despotism of Popery is equally obvious as 
is the elasticity of its principles. To prove this, I will 
not go back to the annals of the Dark Ages — ^to the 
claims of Hildebrand — to the wars waged concerning 
the right of investiture— to the terrible interdicts of 
the Vatican, nor to the despotic doctrines which form 
the chief material of the system. To prove true the 
sentiment uttered by my friend at Lausanne, I will 
call before you living v/itnesses, which you may cross- 
examine at your pleasure. 

A proverb is a short saying or a moral rule deduced 
from an extended experience, and whose truth all ex- 



LETTERS. 175 



Men judged by their company. A catechism. 

perience unites to prove. Now, Sir, it has passed into 
a proverb, that ''men are judged by the company they 
keep." Let us try the Pope by this rule. If sent out 
to select from all the crowned heads of Europe the ver- 
iest despots, who. Sir, would you select ? If you have 
read Grladstone's letters, you would probably select the 
King of Naples first ; and in view of the recent atroci- 
ties in Hungary, you would select the Emperor of Aus- 
tria next. Now he of Naples is the bosom friend of 
Pio Nino, and is regarded by the father of the faithful 
as the most pious of all his children, while the sin of 
perjury lies heavy upon his soul, and the blood of his be- 
trayed and murdered subjects stains all his garments ; 
and he of Austria, in whom centres all the despotism, 
superstition, and cruelty of the house of Hapsburg, is 
the chief prop of his chair ! What the two great pil- 
lars, Jachin and Boaz, were to the temple of Solomon, 
these two despots are to the present Pope. And the 
greater the despot, the higher he stands in the affec- 
tions of the Holy Father. So far for the Pope. 

NoWj Sir, for the priests. The following are extracts 
from a catechism, written by a bishop, and taught to 
all the children in all the schools in the Two Sicilies, as 
quoted from Gladstone's letters to the Earl of Aberdeen, 
to which I have just alluded. I would recommend 
the pamphlet to your serious perusal, and to that of all 
men. More horrible doctrines it is impossible to con- 
ceive of, or to pen ; and yet they are published under 
the vail of religion ! Religion, how often has thy 
purity been invoked to give sanction and currency to 
the "doctrines of devils," and to the cruel machinations 
of priests ! 



176 K 1 R W A N ' S LETTERS. 

Extracts. Liberals lost. People made for submission. 

'* Q,. Are all liberals wicked in one and the same 
fasliion ? 

''A. No; but, notwithstanding, they are traveling 
the same road, and, if they do not alter their course, 
they will arrive at the same goal.*' That is, all liberals 
in politics will be eternally lost ! There is, then, no 
hope for any of us in America ! 

" Cl. Can the people establish fundamental laws in 
a state ? 

^'A. ]N"o ; because a Constitution or fundamental 
laws are, of necessity, a limitation of sovereignty ; and 
this can never receive any measure or boundary except 
by its own act. 

" (^. If the people, in electing a sovereign, impose 
upon him conditions or reservations, will not these form 
the Constitution and fundamental laws of the state ? 

''A. They will, provided the sovereign grant them 
freely; otherwise they will not ; because the people, vjJio 
are made for submission, and not for command, can 
not impose a law upon the sovereignty, which derives 
its power, not from them, but from Grod. 

^^ Q,. If a prince has sworn to observe a Constitution, 
is he bound to maintain it ? 

^^ A. He is, provided it does not overthrow the foun- 
dations of sovereignty ; and provided it is 7iot opposed 
to the general interests of the state. When a sover- 
eign finds a fundamental law is seriously hurtful to his 
people, he is bound to cancel it, because the duty of 
the sovereign is the people's weal. An oath can not 
become an obligation to commit evil, and therefore can 
not bind a sovereign to do what is injurious to his sub- 
iects. Besides, the Head of the Church has author- 



LETTERS. 177 



Absolving power. Sovereign power. Careful teacbiag. 

ity from God to release consciences from oaths^ when 
he judges that there is suitable cause for itP Here 
is the old power of absolving kings from their oaths, 
and turning them loose as blood-hounds among their 
people, revived ! 

'' Q,. Whose business is it to decide when the Con- 
stitution impairs the right of sovereignty, and is ad- 
verse to the welfare of the people ? 

'•A. It is the business of the sovereign, because in 
him resides the high and paramount power established 
by Grod in the state with a view to its good order and 
felicity. 

'-'- Q,. May there not be some danger that the sover- 
eign may violate the Constitution without just cause, 
under the illusion of error or the impulse of passion ? 

^^ A. Errors and passions are the maladies of the 
human race ; but the blessings of health ought not to 
be refused through the fear of sickness." 

This catechism, teaching such horrible doctrines, 
was written by a bishop, is circulated by bishops to all 
their priests, and by the priests is taught to all the peo- 
ple of Sicily ; its doctrines are more carefully taught 
to the young than are any articles of the Christian faith. 
With these extracts before you, will you hesitate a mo- 
ment to believe that '' Popery is the police of despot- 
ism ?" And with doctrines like these it supports des- 
potism in every country in Europe where it exists, and 
where the despots are Papists. And as it absolves a 
Papal king from his oath to his subjects, so it absolves 
Papal subjects from their allegiance to their Protest- 
ant king, when the good of the Church requires it. 
Are these catechism-makers the men for our country ? 

H2 



178 

Watchmen of despotism. Hard swimming. Base means. 

Should these spies of despotism receive any counte- 
nance from freemen ? 

But is it true that the " priests are the watchmen 
6f despotism ?" Never was a more true sentiment ut- 
tered ; and never was the sentiment more true than at 
the present hour. The system is struggling for its very 
life — its foundations are giving way in all lands — ^the 
waves of puhlic opinion are dashing against the super- 
structure, and its priests are putting forth every effort 
to save it and themselves, as they well know that when 
their ship sinks they will have hard swimming. 

Despotisms are always base, and will use any means 
to retain their power. They are puhlic robbers ; and, 
like other robbers, have no conscience as to the means 
they use. They employ spies— use bribery — ^lay snares 
— get up plots — sow dissensions, and use all unright- 
eous means to find out and to kill off their enemies, 
and to consolidate their usurped power, and to put new 
rivets into the chains that bind people and nations to 
their thrones. And as the Papacy is the basest of des- 
potisms, it has the base pre-eminence of using the most 
base means to accomplish its purposes. Other despot- 
isms seek by spies to discover plots, and secret cabals, 
and overt acts ; but Popery has a plan by which not 
only to discover all these, with almost infallible cer- 
tainty, but also the very thoughts of men. And this it 
does through the infamous confessional — " the slaugh- 
ter-house of consciences" — an institution devised in 
hell, and set up on earth in the name of religion, that 
^' the Man of Sin" may find out the secrets of all fam- 
ilies, and of all hearts, and for the purpose of wielding 
them all to the maintenance of his bad dominion. All 



179 

Confessions. Their etFects in Naples, Rome. 

are obliged to confess on the pain of eternal death ; no 
confession avails if any sin or secret thought is kept 
back ; and these confessions, when necessary, are sent to 
head-quarters. In this way the court of Rome is invest- 
ed with a kind of omniscience, as through the priests, its 
spies, its watchmen, who have their confession-boxes 
every where, they find out the secrets of courts, cabi- 
nets, and families, and even the very thoughts of men's 
hearts. And what is the effect of all this ? A true 
Papist is afraid to think, because his conscience drags 
him to the confessional ; and the priest who sits there, 
weaving webs to catch the unwary, as does a bottled 
spider to catch flies, will drag out his thoughts, and 
when these thoughts are drawn out, they are sent to 
head-quarters ! I know the theory is, that confessions 
made to a priest are buried in his bosom ; but has not 
^* the Head of the Church authority from God to re- 
lease consciences from oaths when he judges that there 
is suitable cause for it?" And what cause can be 
more suitable than the good of the Church, and the 
safety of the chair of St. Peter ? 

And what. Sir, must be the natural effect of all this 
upon families ? Go down to Naples and see ! Many 
is the Neapolitan husband, son, and brother, rotting in 
the prisons there on the information wrung from their 
wives, mothers, and sisters by the '^ watchmen of des- 
potism" at the confessional. Go to Rome and see ! 
Many is the noble Roman in exile, or in chains in the 
dungeons of Rome, on the information wrung from the 
female members of their families at the confessional. 
If a wife or daughter goes to confession, the husband 
and father can intrust no secret to either, can not re- 



180 kirwan's letters. 



Effects in the family. No fancy picture. 

pose any confidence in them. The sweets and the con- 
fidences of home are unknown — the sweet, confiding 
love of the family circle is broken up — not a word of 
freedom, or of dissatisfaction, or of complaint must be 
uttered — ^no suspected guest must be entertained — no 
private meetings must be held or alluded to, for all, all 
must be told at the confessional, sent up to the Vatican, 
and down to the police ! Even in the heart of a fond 
wife there is no secret chamber which the priest, " the 
watchman of despotism," can not enter, and from which 
he may not bring forth its most secret and sacred de- 
posits. Thus the mother, daughters, and sisters are 
converted by the infernal confessionalinto spies upon 
the conduct of their husbands and brothers, and are 
taught to believe that they are at once serving Grod 
and the Church, and saving their own souls — ^yes, and 
even doing the greatest good to their husbands and 
brothers, when revealing their thoughts and their con- 
duct to these " watchmen of despotism." And is this, 
Sir, a fancy picture ? Gro and spend a month in Naples, 
or in Rome, and seek information from those who are 
competent and not afraid to give it, and you will say 
that the picture is not one half to the life. And I only 
wonder that the husbands, sons, and brothers of wives, 
mothers, and sisters, that go to the knees of Papal priests 
to confess, do not rise as one man, and pile up the con- 
fession-boxes for a grand bonfire, and drive their rev- 
erend confessors and seducers to Purgatory for purifica- 
tion. 

Nor, Sir, are these pictures of these '^ watchmen of 
despotism" confined to Naples and Rome. Their char- 
acter in those lands of Papal darkness, where the very 



181 

Priests every where the same. Espionage 

light is darkness, is their universal character. Wher- 
ever the bishops or priests, the monks or the nuns of 
Romanism are found, they are only the spies, " the 
v^atchmen" of the driveling despot that lives in the 
Vatican, himself the victim of a clique of cardinal des- 
pots. Thi'ough their instrumentality the nations of the 
earth lie open to the eye of Rome ; and she is enabled 
to judge of the best means of keeping them in her pow- 
er, or of subduing them to her sceptre. Archbishops 
are the spies of the cardinals — bishops, of the arch- 
bishops — priests, of the bishops — and your poor Popish 
maid or coachman, the nurse of your children, or the 
waiter at your table, is the spy of the priest ! And 
this vast system of espionage and tyranny is mainly 
conducted through the infamous confessional ! 

Are these watchmen of despotism the men for our 
country ? I put this question to you, as its honored 
and honorable chief judicial officer, and upon whose 
ermine there is not a stain. 

With great respect, yours. 



182 kirwan's letters. 

Priests unfrocked. Opposite opinions. 



LETTER XX. 

Character of Priests. — A Walk in Turin. — Bishops in England and 
America Spies of Rome. — Ecclesiastical Preferments the Rewards of 
Spies. — When Priests and Despots are in League, no Hope for the 
People. — Examples of priestly Despotism. — Curse from the Altar. — 
Case of the Antrim Miller. — Priests the Curse of Ireland. — Can they 
be a blessing to America 1 

My DEAR Sir, — ^As I have a little more to say on the 
suhject, I return again to the " watchmen of despot- 
ism." These watchmen have been permitted to wear 
the garment and the crook of shepherds long enough ; 
it is time that their overcoats should be torn off, and 
that they should be revealed in their true livery. 

Perhaps in no part of the world are the priests of 
Romanism putting forth more strenuous efforts to pro- 
mote the interests of the despotism of Rome than in the 
United States. And while lauding our institutions, 
and at times almost eloquent in favor of liberty of con- 
science, there is not a feeling of their hearts, nor a sym- 
pathy of their nature, which does not cluster around 
the man of the triple crown. As with one voice, did 
they not denounce the Roman Republic, and hurl their 
anathemas against its leaders, and preach up a '' Peter 
pence" contribution for to sustain the priests carousing 
at Graeta ? Did not bishops here, while playing into 
the hands of Whigs or Democrats to gain their ends, 
denounce the revolution in Hungary, rejoice over the 
bloody triumphs of the united forces of Russia and 



183 

Heart at Rome. A talk in Turin. 

Austria, and denounce the great Magyar even before 
he trod the soil, or breathed the air of our free coun- 
try ? How do you account. Sir, for this sympathy with 
tyranny abroad, and this eulogy of freedom at home ? 
Their heart is in Rome, and so is their allegiance. 
Priests are here " the watchmen of despotism," and are 
bound to Rome by every tie that can bind a slave to 
his master. And if it would only confirm the dominion 
of Pio Nono, and tend to suppress the Bible and the 
awful heresy of '^private reasoning," there is not a 
priest in this Union who would not rejoice over the 
ruins of our Republic to-morrow. The man who be- 
lieves otherwise is almost fit to read without a smile, 
and with edification, " the History of the Holy House 
of Loretto, by the Very Rev. P. R. Kenrick, V. G." 

As I was one day viewing with a friend the city of 
Turin, admiring the beauty of the surrounding scenery 
— ^the Superga, the snowy Alps, the winding Po, and 
the beautiful CoUine, sparkling with villas from bottom 
to top, ''"Where," said I, " is the new Protestant church 
to be erected ?" We were moving along at the moment 
a beautiful promenade, wide, and planted with trees, 
and destined at no distant day to be the finest street in 
that rapidly increasing city. " In this very street," was 
the reply. No finer or more prominent position could 
be selected. The question led to a most interesting 
conversation as to the progress of free institutions in 
that country, and as to the determination of the king, 
and nobles, and Parliament to secure freedom to all to 
worship Grod as they deem best. During the deeply- 
interesting and eloquent remarks of my friend, ho gave 
utterance to this sentiment : '' Our English and Amcr- 



184 kirwan's letters. 

Wiseman and Hughes. Britain. Who get palliums. 

ican friends come to Italy to see us. We are glad to 
see them. We give them often in detail what is doing 
to promote right views and right institutions ; but they 
often, unwittingly, do us great injury. They go back 
and publish our statements to the world ; and the first we 
know of the matter is by hearing of a most urgent ap- 
peal from Wiseman of London, or Hughes of New York, 
for the withdrawal of all privileges fi-om Protestants, 
so as to check all progress toward freedom in these 
countries. What we tell here in private is published 
abroad, and is sent back here by bishops and priests, 
as information to these priestly despots." What a fact 
in proof of the allegation that Popish priests are the 
spies of despotism ! You can not. Sir, close your eyes 
to the existing state of things in Britain. There is not 
an act of Parliament — from its inception to its passage 
or defeat — ^bearing in the most remote degree upon the 
education or moral instruction of the people, which is 
not known and canvassed at Rome, and on which the 
Papal party in the kingdom does not side with the Vati- 
can. And in our own happy country, the mitre and 
the pallium are usually rewards of merit bestowed by 
the Pope upon those priests who have best performed 
their duties as his pimps or watchmen. These ecclesi- 
astical baubles are not the rewards of piety, or talent, 
or of high virtue, but of subserviency to that politico- 
ecclesiastical power which claims to fetter the nations, 
and to think for the race, by the authority of Grod. 
And the winners of cardinals' caps are usually those 
most unscrupulous in principle, and most destitute of 
the cardinal virtues. 

" Popery is the police of despotism," said my friend 



LETTERS. 185 



No hope. Terrible agency. The prop of despotism. 

at Lausanne. That it is the agency through which 
despots can best govern their people, is most obvious. 
When the people are Papists, and the priests are in 
league with the state, what hope is there for the people ? 
If a man breathes at the confessional the aspirations of 
his soul after liberty, they are known to the police. 
Wives and sisters are made spies upon their husbands 
and brothers. Where can a spark of patriotism glow 
beyond the scrutiny of priestly eyes ? It prohibits the 
circulation of the Bible ; it forbids the religious tract ; 
it anathematizes all works which vindicate the natural 
rights of man ; it walls out all evangelical influences ; 
it withholds all religious rites, as in the case of the 
bishops of Sardinia, from those who oppose its policy ; 
it muzzles the press ; it stimulates the faithful by prom- 
ises of heaven, and terrifies the disobedient by the 
threats of sending them to hell, making them all to be- 
lieve that the keys of heaven and hell hang by her 
girdle. With an agency like this in his favor among 
a people, and that can do all this under the sanctions 
of religion, and as the vicegerents of heaven, what has 
any despot to fear ? And hence the natural inclina- 
tions of despotism to Romanism ! Without Romanism 
and its priests, the government of Naples could not sur- 
vive a day, nor could that of Austria a week. Where 
the people are Papists, the priests are their real govern- 
ors, and it is the policy of rulers to court their influence. 
This explains some things very queer in the recent con- 
duct of the King of Prussia ; it explains the entire con- 
duct of that puppet, " the Nephew of his Uncle," as he 
is contemptuously called , who now rules in France ; it 
explains the unworthy conduct of some of our own 



186 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 



Priest's power. Despot and priest. Ordinary priests. 

farthing politicians, who flatter the priest to get the 
votes of the people he rides ! And until the power of 
the priest over the people is broken — ^until thus the 
strong motive is removed from despots for protecting 
and paying the priest, I see no hope for the nations 
now bowed down under the double yoke of despotism 
and Romanism. As long as the vigilant police of Pop- 
ery can be sustained by a despot among a people that 
will submit to it, for the freedom of that people th^re 
is no earthly hope. To be free, the despot and the 
priest must go up into the air, or sink down into the 
pit together ! Hence, unless I greatly misinterpret the 
feelings of Papal Europe, and the signs of the times, 
the next war south, or even north of the Alps, will be 
a terrible one for the priests. " The watchmen of des- 
potism" will be the very first victims ; as far as they 
are concerned, it will be a war to the knife. They 
have sown the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind. 
And it is astonishing to what a degree the ordinary 
priests partake of the spirit of the system, and act the 
despot within the bounds of their little parishes. Even 
in this free country, much of our emigrant population 
suffers under their despotism ; and, although free to 
think and to act for themselves under our laws, they 
stand in terror of ^'the higher law" of the priest. I 
have known the life of a poor servant girl to be threat- 
ened by her own immediate relatives for becoming a 
Protestant, and since I commenced writing this letter, 
another has told me that her own mother threatened to 
shoot her dead because she has attached herself to a 
Methodist Church ! So horrible is the system- that, 
when it takes hold of an ignorant mind, it extinguishes 



LETTERS. 187 



Priests promote violence. A widow. Common thing. 

even natural affection ! And, if not exhorters to these 
brutal exhibitions of superstitious passion, the priests 
are no check to them. In many portions of the world, 
they excite to them by exhortation and example. 

Not many months ago, a poor Irish widow, with 
eight or nine children, came to me to secure service for 
one of them. They all looked healthy, but not one of 
them knew a letter of the alphabet. " How came 
you," said I, '^ to bring up these children in such gross 
ignorance ?" Her reply astounded me. " I lived," said 
she, " in Ireland, between two small towns, in each of 
which was a good Protestant school, and I wanted to 
send my children to them, but the priest said if I did, 
that he would curse me from the altar ; and then no- 
body would speak to me ; and they might kill me and 
my children." And the least acquaintance with the 
cruel despotism of the priests in the south and west of 
Ireland, will satisfy any body that this is only a favor- 
able illustration of their general conduct. I have re- 
cently passed through the north, west, and eastern por- 
tions of that unhappy country, and I have learned 
things as to their conduct to their people which should 
brand them with the brand of infamy as indelibly as 
ever was Cain. 

"Why, Sir, it is no uncommon thing for these '' sur- 
pliced ruffians," as they are called by the London 
Times, to go to a school collected by the philanthropy 
and supported by the charity of a few Protestant ladies, 
and to break it up by cowhiding all its pupils. This 
is a very common occurrence. The daughter of an 
old magistrate residing near Ballinrobe collected a 
school, in which they daily taught the chiklren of the 



188 kirwan's letters. 

A whipping scene. Crazed by a curse. Raving. 

poor. The priest entered it a few months ago, and 
asked if the children were taught to read with a view 
of reading the Bible. On being informed that they 
were, he whipped every child out of the house. The 
priest denounced from the altar a school under the care 
of the lady of the High Sheriff of Q-alway, and \vhipped 
a respectable old man out of the chapel for permitting 
his children to go to it. These Bible haters are often 
seen flogging poor ignorant mothers in the streets and 
roads for permitting their children to go to other than a 
Papist school, and when no such school is within their 
reach ! 

One of these Irish priests residing at Ballahadireen, 
a few years since, had a quarrel with one of his poor 
parishioners ; in this quarrel, the wife of the man sided 
with her husband, like a noble-minded and honest 
woman. Seeing her in church one day, the priest 
cursed her from the altar. Her reverence for the 
priest, and her superstitious faith in his ghostly power, 
gave to the curse an awful effect. From that hour she 
has been a crazed maniac. She yet lives to testify to 
the power of the priestly curse over an ignorant people; 
and as she meets her neighbors, she thus addresses 
them : '^ I have lost my soul ; when the priest cursed 
me, I felt my head open, and my soul flew away. I 
have been seeking it ever since, but have not been able 
to find it. 0, will you not help me to find my soul." 

To illustrate the priesfs curse^ and to show you its 
terrific power over a Popish people, permit me to nar- 
rate a case. There lived in the glens of Antrim a plain 
country farmer, who, with a few acres of land, rented 
a mill. He was well versed in the Irish language, and 



189 

The Antrim miller. Bell, book, and candle. The effect. 

was employed as a reader to his neighbors of the Irish 
Bible. He was a Papist. The priest sought to dis- 
suade him from the blessed work, but he would not be 
dissuaded. He threatened him ; but he disregarded 
his threatenings. He then announced that, unless he 
desisted from reading to his poor neighbors the Word 
of G-od, on a certain Sabbath he w^ould curse him from 
the altar, with ''bell, book, and candle." But the rav- 
ings of the priest were disregarded by the uonest man, 
who had now learned to fear Grod, and to fear nothing 
else. On the eighteenth of August, 1844, the curse 
was pronounced by the Rev. Luke Walsh, priest of 
Culfeightrin, upon Charles M'Laughlin, and two others 
that he had associated with him, as follows : '' My 
curse and Gfod's curse on Charles M'Laughlin, Hugh 
Shields, and John M'Cay, and on all who shall hold 
any communion with tbem, or eat at the same table, 
or work in the same field with them." Then the bell 
was rung, the book was closed., and the candles on the 
altar were extinguished. This completed the fearful 
curse. And thus these men, with their families, were 
excluded from the society, the business, the charities 
of the earth, and consigned to eternal perdition, for the 
sin of reading the Scriptures to their neighbors, and by 
a man professing to be a minister of the Lord Jesus 
Christ ! ! 

And what was the effect of this curse as to the chief 
offender, McLaughlin ? No person dared bring corn to 
his mill ; he was shunned in the streets as if a leper ; 
none would buy of him, or sell to him ; his children 
were beaten in the streets ; and on approaching a 
wagon in a market town to buy some meal for his 



190 

Fearful state. Father Walshes multiplied. 

family, the owner fled from his wagon and his meal, 
as if an escaped spirit from the pit were approaching 
him! And, were it not for the protection of some 
Protestants in the place, he must have fled from the 
home of his ancestors, or have fallen beneath the blow 
of the murderer, who, in taking his life, would feel 
that he was serving Q-od ; and that if he sinned, he 
could easily procure a pardon from Father Walsh. The 
priest was brought to trial for damages, and was sen- 
tenced to a fine of £70, with costs ; and the above 
facts are taken from the report of the trial now before 
me. I believe this " surpliced ruffian," "Walsh, is yet 
alive; I know McLaughlin is, and that he is an hum- 
ble Christian, laboriously and successfully engaged in 
the prosecution of the work of missions among the Pa- 
pal Irish that are swarming in the Cowgate and around 
the Grrass Market in Edinburgh. I had the pleasure 
of visiting one of his stations in that city, and found 
him surrounded with many, once Papists, but who were 
brought to the saving knowledge of Christ by the read- 
ing of the Bible. Now, Sir, conceive of three or four ' 
thousand of these Father Walshes scattered all over 
Ireland — ^the watchmen of despotism in every parish ; 
finding out family secrets at the confessional ; putting 
out every light that would expose their wickedness ; 
when neither coaxing nor threats will win men to their 
wiU, thus cursing them from the altar ; and then, if 
you can, conceive of the fact that eight out of every 
ten of all its inhabitants believe that these priests are 
the vicegerents of Grod ; that they do all they do by 
the authority of Heaven, and you will not wonder that 
Ireland is what it is, nor that its people, who are 



191 

Bad effects of priests. Their two masters. 

swarming upon our shores, are what they are. Their 
deep ignorance, their low vices, their unbridled pas- 
sions, their low civilization, their squalid poverty, are 
all, all the results of the despotism of priests, many of 
whom are the most ferocious, vicious, profane, and rol- 
licking wretches in the country. They care not for 
the government of the land ; strong in the superstitious 
reverence of the masses, they put it to defiance. They 
care not for the rights of landlords who are not sub- 
servient to them ; many of them have fallen at noon- 
day on their own estates, because of a hint from the 
altar in the way of a question like this: '' Should such 
men live ?" They care not for the people, only so far 
as to keep the yoke of bondage on their neck. The 
people may do what else they desire if they will not 
send their children to Protestant schools, nor read the 
Bible, nor become Protestants. These men, who every 
where look as if they far preferred prescribing to prac- 
ticing penance, have but two masters, the Pope and 
their belly. To these they yield implicit obedience ; 
blessing all that promote, and cursing all that oppose 
these masters. 0, Sir, are these Father Walshes the 
men for America ? If we encourage these mission- 
aries of barbarism in our free land until they obtain 
the preponderance they desire, we will deserve to be 
treated as was Satan by St. Dunstan, who led him 
about by the nose with a red-hot pincers ; or to be 
ranked with the devout donkey of St. Anthony of Pad- 
ua, who, after three days' fasting, left his provender to 
worship the Host. 

With great respect, yours. 



192 

Visit to Ballenglen schooL 



LETTER XXI. 

Ballenglen. — An Incident. — Persecution of Converts. — Thrilling Fanat- 
icism al a Funeral. — The Way the Priests get Money. — An Incident. 
— Cursing from the Altar. — Hard Case of Donovan. — Doing Penance 
in Sheets. — Priests' Power giving Way. — Anecdote of a Girl. — The 
Milkman. — Taking the Bull by the Horns. — The Curse of Ireland. 

My dear Sir, — Even at the risk of taxing your pa- 
tience and that of my readers, I will again return to 
the conduct of Papal priests toward the Papal popula- 
tion of Ireland. I do so for various reasons : to excite 
a feeling of compassion in the tosom of all Americans 
toward its swarming emigrants weekly landed on our 
shores ; to expose the priests and their religion to the 
world ; to encourage Popish emigrants here to assert 
their independence, where there is no priestly power to 
strik-e them down ; and to place before you and all our 
people what blessings we may reasonably expect from 
the many priests sent from '^the island of saints," 
trained and drilled in Maynooth to guard our institu- 
tions, to enlighten and Christianize us. 

In company with Dr. Edgar, and of Dr. Andrews, of 
Queen's College, Belfast, and of Mr. Allen, of BalHna, 
names not unknown in Ireland, or Britain, or America, 
I visited the Scotch Mission School in Ballenglen. It 
was deeply interesting to see there upward of a hund- 
red children, neatly dressed, under pious and compe- 
tent teachers, taught " to learn and to earn," and, with 



I 



kirwan's letters. 193 

The girl and priest. A mother. What can we do ? 

few exceptions, collected from the surrounding huts of 
the Papal peasantry. " Do you see that giil on the 
upper seat, about twenty-one or two years of age ?" 
said the noble Scotch lady at the head of the female 
department to me. I looked, and replied in the affirm- 
ative. " That girl," she continued, " has been here but 
a few weeks. She came here not knowing a letter, 
and scarcely any thing else. She is learning rapidly, 
and can now earn two or three shillings a week with 
her needle, and can do considerable for the support of 
her family. When going home from school yesterday, 
the priest met her at the road, and sought to horsewhip 
her for coming here, but she outran him. She told 
her grievance to her mother, who sided with the priest, 
and expressed her sorrow that he did not catch her ; 
and yet she returned here this morning, but without 
sleeping a wink, or eating a mouthful since she left 
here yesterday afternoon." Amazed at the statement, 
I asked if there was no redress against such priestly 
barbarity. " What can we do ?" was the reply. " We 
may indict them, but then nobody will peril their life 
by testifying against them ; nor can you get a jury, on 
which there is a single Catholic, to convict them. A 
priest not long ago was indicted for flogging a woman 
terribly, and yet, when called to witness against him, 
she testified that 'his reverence did not hurt her at 
all.' " And this is but an illustration of what is now 
of daily occurrence in almost every portion of Ireland. 
Until within a few years, it was at the risk of his 
life that any of the peasantry dared to leave the priest 
for the minister. The fury of the priest excited tlio 
people to fury, and the poor convert was every where 

I 



194 KIRWAN'S LETTERS. 

A disgrace. Broken ties. A sister's love. 

an unsheltered, unpitied object of abuse, contempt, and 
violence. Even the mother cast out the child from 
the sanctuary of her heart, and mourned over the con- 
version of her child to G-od as a deep, dark disgrace to 
her family. Hear a boy tell of the ties through which 
one must break ^Yhen he deserts the religion of the 
priest : 

'* pity the state of a poor Irish youth, 
Whose heart has been touched with a love of the truth ; 
By father and mother renounced and forgot, 
Should he dare to be that which the priest bids hira not. 
Should he open the Book which to sinners was given, 
To try to make out the right way to heaven, 
The eyes will look cold that smiled on him before, 
And hearts that once loved him will love him no more." 

And withm a few weeks the constabulary force of 
the diocese of Tuam, over which the \ailgar and sav- 
age M^Hale presides, has been greatly increased, for 
the purpose of keeping the peace, which has been great- 
ly distiu'bed by attacks of the mob, stimulated by the 
priests, upon converts from Romanism. 

It is impossible to make Protestants in America, or 
even Papists who have been bom here, to understand 
the deep degradation to which the priests have reduced 
the native Irish, or the extent to which they have 
steeped them in the most gross superstition. Ponder 
the following statements selected from a little pam- 
phlet, entitled *' The Trials and Triumphs of Irish Mis- 
sions," by Dr. John Edgar. 

'' At the burial of a convert, his sister hastily gath- 
ered in her apron their parents' bones, and buried them 
in another part of the church-yard, lest they should be 
polluted by the cursed remains of an impenitent heretic." 



KIR WAN's LETTERS. 195 

Burial of a convert. The way to catch herring. 

" At the burial of a convert who died of hardships 
endured in shipwreck, his sisters created a great dis- 
turbance by their desperate efforts to have him buried 
as a Romanist ; and some idea may be formed of the 
excitement created among the Romish crowd, when 
one sister sung to the wild Irish cry, 

" ' O would that thy grave were made under the billow, 
And would that the wild shark himself were thy pillow, 
Than thus on the bed in thy senses to lie, 
And our Church and her priesthood so boldly defy !' 

'^ And the second sister, taking up the plaintive wail, 
sang, 

" ' O Donagh ! Donagh ! can it be, 

And hast thou left us so, 
The gem, the flower of all thy race, 

With heretics to go ? 
We lay thee in thy father's grave, 

Beneath thy mother's head, 
No parson o'er thee e'er shall pray, 

No Bible e'er be read.' 

" In the native Irish grave-yards the latest-buried 
coffin is put under the others." This explains a clause 
in the above wail. 

'' How very largely must a Romish priest draw on 
the superstition of his victim when he demands a fee 
for saying mass to drive away vermin, or for cutting 
the sign of the cross to cure a vicious mule. During 
the famine priests trafficked to an enormous extent on 
the gullibility of their people by blessing salt, for hire, 
as a cure for the disease of the potato. Half a dozen 
of crews are paying them at the same time for saying 
mass over their boats ; and for five or six pounds they 
make a bargain with the people alongshore to bring 
an abundance of herring or mackerel into the bay. 



196 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

A.n awful oath. The effect An altar curse. 

'' what would not Ireland be if the power of the 
priests was employed for good, as, alas, it is for ill ! A 
man-servant in a highly respectable family, being ap- 
parently near his death, sent for a priest, who refused 
to administer ' the last rites' until he would bind him- 
self by an oath, in the name of the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy G-host, that he would never listen to the 
Bible again. He refused, and the priest left him. On 
this a fellow-servant rushed into the room, and so placed 
before him the horrors of damnation if he died without 
the rites of the Church, that he took the awful oath. 
Unexpectedly, he recovered, and he still lives, with the 
vow to resist all Scriptural instruction on his soul. 
"When asked whether he did not know that the Bible 
was the word of Grod, he replied that he knew it well, 
but that he knew also that he w^ould receive only the 
burial of a dog if he died without the blessing of the 
priest." 

And can we wonder at the ignorance, the supersti- 
tion, the poverty, the servility of the peasantry of Ire- 
land that are landed on our shores, when they and their 
fathers have been crushed for ages under a spiritual 
despotism like this ? 

I have given one instance in illustration of the priest- 
ly curse from the altar. I select another from the lit- 
tle pamphlet before me. A poor woman sent her chil- 
dren to a Protestant school, and, on the trial of the 
priest for cursing her, a witness thus testified under 
oath: '^ The priest put on a black dress; the clerk 
quenched all the candles but one, and that one the 
priest put out, saying, ' So the light of heaven is quench- 
ed upon her soul.' He then shut the book and said, 



LETTERS. IQi 



The cursed woman. Father O'Brien. 

' The gates of heaven are shut against her.' Her neigh- 
bors immediately withdrew all intercourse from her. 
Shop-keepers refused to sell her even a bit of bread. 
All her children but one were included in the curse ; 
her husband forsook her ; and, had she not been taken 
inta the house of a kind Protestant, she must have per- 
ished when on the eve of giving birth to a child, which 
the priest had also cursed, for he cursed the fruit of 
her womb !" 

Now, Sir, with priests of this infernal character 
swarming in every part of Ireland, making here a 
" sick call" for a shilling — there ^'giving a communion" 
for two and sixpence — there saying mass for five shil- 
lings — there baptizing for sums varying from two to 
twenty shillings ; marrying sometimes for twenty shil- 
lings and sometimes for twenty pounds ; and every 
where carrying on a war to the knife against the Bible, 
and all its free, ennobling, and elevating influences, 
can you, can any man wonder that Ireland is so low 
in the scale of civilization — that its people are so poor, 
ignorant, and superstitious — that its sons and daughters 
in all the lands whither they wander are hewers of 
wood and drawers of water ? 

As illustrating the terrible tyranny of these " sur- 
pliced ruflSans" as exercised in another way, permit me 
to state another case which occurred a few years since. 
A Rev. Mr. O'Brien, wishing to build a chapel in the 
parish of Clonakilty, drew up a subscription paper, and 
taxed his parishioners according to his estimate of their 
means. A baker by the name of Donovan was marked 
at si^tteen shillings and threepence, which he paid. He 
was again taxed nine vshillings, which he also paid, but 



198 kirwan's letters. 

Poor Donovan. Priest inexorable. Penance in sheets. 

under protest, because of his poverty. Soon a third de- 
mand came for sixteen shillings more, which he refused 
to pay. On the next Sabbath, as he was going to mass, 
he was asked by the priest whether he would pay that 
sixteen shillings or not. He replied, " I am not able." 
The priest replied, " I will settle you." Terrified by 
the remark, Donovan sent sixteen shillings by his wife 
to the priest, who then refused to take less than two 
guineas. On the following Sunday he cursed him from 
the altar, and all those who refused or neglected to pay 
what they were taxed. Donovan went on the next holi- 
day to mass, where he was formally excommunicated, 
and all were cursed who would have any thing to do 
with him. So terrible was the dread of this curse, that 
he could not buy turf enough to heat his oven, nor 
could he sell any of his stock. Reduced to despair, he 
went in penance, in a white sheet, to the chapel, and 
asked pardon of the priest and of G-od. The priest took 
him to his house and demanded the two guineas, but 
the sheeted penitent told him he could not possibly 
make it up. The excommunication was continued ; 
the man was compelled to shut up shop, and was driven 
to beggary. These facts were brought out in a trial for 
damages before a jury in Cork, which fined the rev- 
erend rascal fifty pounds. 

This thing of doing penance, by going to chapel 
wrapped up in a white sheet, is quite a common affair 
in some parts of Ireland. Sometimes whole families 
are compelled to go thus dressed, to atone for the sins 
of one member ; and when the sin has any squinting 
toward Protestantism, the penance is increased by com- 
pelling them to go barefooted and bareheaded. A fam- 



LETTERS. 199 



The mortified maid. Her temper. Living protests. 

ily in Mayo had thus to do penance for the sins of one 
of their number. To the family belonged a young 
woman, who, although advanced in years, had not 
quite surrendered all hopes of matrimony. Her natural 
hair, which was not so dark as it once was, she sought 
to conceal by raven locks, which gave her an appear- 
ance quite youthful. But on the fated Sabbath her 
borrowed locks had to be laid aside ; and she entered 
the church sheeted, barefooted, and, sad to narrate, 
bareheaded ! Her gray hair, and short and thin at 
that, revealed her years, and gave her hopes of matri- 
mony to the winds. She yet lives, but has never for- 
given the priest the double injury which he inflicted on 
her, to uncover her gray hairs and destroy her market. 
Although a good Papist, it is rumored that she raves 
at his reverence whenever she thinks of the exposure 
of her thin gray hairs on that penitential Sunday. I 
give you the story as I received it from a sympathizing 
acquaintance of the deeply- injured spinster. 

0, Sir, there is not a poor, ignorant, half-clad Irish 
Papist, man or woman, that comes to these shores, that 
is not sent here by Providence to be a protest against 
Romanism, and a witness against its mercenary and 
ruflSian priests, and to warn us as a nation against a 
system which only blights, to the extent of its influ- 
ence, all the interests of humanity. Nations recover 
from the wasting influences of war, famine, and pesti- 
lence ; but for the people who wear and will bear the 
yoke of Romanism, there is no recovery. 

But, Sir, it is pleasant to know that, even in Ire- 
land, the people are beginning to see, and riglitly to 
estimate this horrible despotism, and to assert their 



200 kirwan's letters. 

The wand broken. The Kerry girl. The milkman. 



rights, even amid the dangers that threatened them 
when cursed and excommunicated from the altar. The 
wand of the priest is broken ; and the peasant that once 
cowered before him as a chicken before a hawk, or as 
a lamb before a wolf, now dares to resist him to his face. 
The gentry that once feared him, because of his fear- 
ful power over their tenants, are beginning to treat him 
as he deserves. In spite of his altar curses, children are 
sent to school — in spite of his anathemas, the people by 
hundreds dud thousands read the Bible and believe it, 
and are passing over to swell the ranks of Protestant- 
ism. Some amusing anecdotes are every where told in 
illustration of all this. " Do you pray to the Yirgin 
Mary ?" said a priest to a bright-eyed Kerry girl, the 
daughter of one of his parishioners, that he met near a 
schoolhouse with a Bible in her hand. '^ No, your rever- 
ence ; and why should I ?" was the reply. '^Because 
she knows all things, and will hear and answer your 
prayers," said the priest. Quick as a flash, the girl re- 
plied, " Now it is singular, your reverence, that if she 
knows all things, that she did not know where her Son 
was when he was missed from the company that was 
returning from Jerusalem to G-alilee ; and see, here is 
the place," handing him the Bible, and pointing him 
to the second chapter of Luke. And he rode away, no 
doubt cursing the Bible, the girl, and the school in his 
heart. 

An Irish milkman commenced reading the Bible ; 
his priest heard of it, and was soon at his house. '' I 
am informed that you read the Bible, John," said he ; 
'' is my information correct ?" " Sure it is thrue, plase 
your reverence ! and a fine book it is," said John. " But 



kirwan's letters. 201 

The colloquy. Milks his own cow. 

you know it is very wrong to read the Scriptures j and 
that an ignorant man like you has no right to do so," 
said the priest. " But you must be afther provin' that 
same before I can consint to lave it off," said John. 
The colloquy then proceeded as follows : 

Priest. " That I will soon do ; I will prove it from 
the book itself." And, taking the Bible, he read this 
passage, from 1 Peter, ii., 2: ''As new-born babes, de- 
sire the sincere milk of the Word, that you may grow 
thereby." " Here you see," said he, " that you are 
wrong to read the Scriptures yourself; you are only a 
babe, and you are enjoined to desire the sincere milk 
of the Word ; one who really understands what the sin- 
cere milk is, must give it to you, and teach you." 

John. ''Ah, but be aisy, your reverence, while I tell 
you. A little time ago I was took ill ; I got a man to 
milk my cows, and to attend on my business, and what 
do you think he did ? Why, instead of giving me the 
rale milk, he chated me by puttin' water in it ; and if 
you get my Bible, you may serve me that same. No, 
no, I will keep my cow, and milk it myself, when I can 
get the sincere milk, and not, as I should from you, 
mixed with water." 

Priest. "Well, John, I see that you are wiser than 
I thought you were ; and as you are not quite a babe, 
keep your Bible, but don't lend it, or read it to your 
neighbors." 

John, " Sure enough, your reverence, while I have 
a cow, and can give a little milk to my poor neighbors 
who have none, I feel it my duty to do so, as a Chris- 
tian, and, saving your reverence, I will." 

What became of the milkman, the little pamphlet, 

12 



202 kirwan's letters. 

An incident. Harrowing at midnight. Clogher. 

'' Ireland, its Curse and Cure," from which I quote the 
incident, does not state ; but it suggests that he was 
probably cursed with ^'bell, book, and candle," as was 
another man for the same offense, and upon whom it 
fell most heavily. He had a little field from which he 
made a living. It was plowed and sown ; but the curse 
of the priest would allow no person to hire him a horse 
to harrow it. And, at dead of night, he was compelled 
to yoke himself and wife to the harrow, and thus to 
cover his seed ! ! And with such priests of barbarism 
swarming in the island, and thus every where govern- 
ing and grinding the people, is it any w^onder that the 
emigrants from Ireland are as ignorant and supersti- 
tious as we find them ? They deserve our pity and com- 
miseration; and the scorn and contempt with which 
they are often visited, should be poured upon the re- 
ligion and its priests, which have been, and are, the 
chief causes of their degradation. 

To show you the manner in which the gentry, so 
many of whom have fallen victims to curses from the 
altar, begin to treat the priests, permit me to narrate a 
circumstance. There resides at Clogher a family by 
the name of Holmes. The present head of the family, 
a large proprietor and humane, was denounced, and, to 
save his life, he fled to Dublin. The outrage became 
known to a younger brother in the army, who was 
greatly excited by it. He hastened home from Lon- 
don, and, on the eve of a feast-day, called on the priest, 
and requested him to ask the people, after mass on the 
succeeding day, to remain behind in the chapel, as he 
had something to say to them, to which he assented. 
Suspecting something, however, the priest commenced 



LETTERS. 203 



A young hero. A fine speech. Priest strnck dumb. 

mass earlier than usual — hastened through it — and 
w}:.en young Holmes came to chapel, the people were 
dismissed. He invited them back to the chapel, and 
sent for the priest ; but the messengers could not find 
him. " I will find him," said he; and left the chapel, 
but soon returned with his reverence. With the priest 
by his side, he thus addressed the people from one of 
the steps of the altar. ''My fathers have long resided 
in this place, and have they not always been the kind 
friends of your fathers ?" " Yes, yes, your honor," re- 
sounded from all parts of the chapel. " My brother has 
succeeded to the estates here, and has he not always 
been a kind landlord ?" The same reply echoed from 
every part of the house. ''And now what is the re- 
ward for all his, and all our fathers' kindnesses, which 
you are about to give him ? There are those eating at 
your tables, sleeping in your beds, and sheltered in your 
houses, who are pledged to murder him ; and, to save 
his life, he has had to leave the home of his birth. He 
will return in a few days ; and I stand here before you, 
to warn you, that if my brother goes down to the grave 
a murdered man, there is one man in this parish that 
will soon follow him, and that man is this priest, who 
has denounced him from this altar." He turned round 
and looked the priest full in the face, who cowered be- 
fore him. He left the chapel, the people making way 
for him, without insult or molestation. His brother 
returned in a few days to his family and to his home, 
where he resides at the present hour, as safe a man 
from assassination as there is in Ireland, as long as that 
priest and his brother live ! I was entertained at the 
hospitable house of Clogher, and stood on the altar step 



204 kirwan's letters. 

Cure for curses. Cure for Ireland. 

on which that young Holmes stood, when, by his bold 
and manly bearing, he struck with a salutary terror 
the priest and his parishioners ! As a sense of guilt 
always renders men cowardly, denunciations of land- 
lords from the altar have greatly diminished since the 
hero of Clogher taught them how to put a stop to them. 
Romanism and its priests have been, and now are, 
the curse of Ireland ; and the only cure for Ireland lies in 
their removal. And can the curse of Ireland be a bless- 
ing to any land ? Can it be. Sir, a blessing to Amer- 
ica ? Are these Father Walshes and Father O'Briens, 
these reverend and right reverend altar-cursing '' watch- 
men of despotism," the men to Christianize and civil- 
ize Americans — the men to teach our people the Gros- 
pel of Christ, and the true way to heaven ? From these 
ministers of barbarism and missionaries of darkness, 
may the Lord deliver us and our posterity ! 

"With great respect, yours. 



205 

Generation of vipers. Priests get money. 



LETTER XXII. 

Deceivings of Priests. — Nunneries. — Taking the Vail. — Stories about 
Luther and Calvin. — Case of poor Bruley. — The Vaudois Monsters. 
— Bridge of Purgatory broken. — Father O'Flanagan. — Why these de- 
ceivings? — Priests deserve Purgatory. 

My dear Sir, — You can readily glean, from my pre- 
ceding letters, my estimate of the general character of 
Papal priests. While there are exceptions to the rule, 
yet I believe, as a rule, that they are, like the Phari- 
sees of old, " a generation of vipers;" that, as a class, 
they are dishonest traffickers in the souls of men. The 
trade of a priest, and especially when a priest becomes 
a bishop or an archbishop, is an exceedingly lucrative 
one. What may not a priest squeeze from a people 
whom he makes believe that he carries in his pocket 
the keys of heaven and hell, and that he can, at pleas- 
ure, admit them to the bliss of the one, or shut them 
up amid the eternal miseries of the other ? And hence 
it is that these men so easily draw gold from the cof- 
fers of the rich, and extract silver and coppers even 
from the rags of the most wretched beggars. Wliat 
will not a man give to save his soul ? And all their 
worldly interests are involved in keeping up their de- 
lusions, and in keeping their people from contact with 
every thing that would in the least degree tend to dis- 
sipate them. And it is to their ways of blinding and 
deluding the people, so as to stimulate their faith, and 



206 kirwan's letters. 



1 



Ways of deluding. Nuns. Nunneries. Taking the vail. 

to protect their frauds and deceivings from exposure, 
that I ask your attention in the present letter. Is 
there a thing peculiar to Popery which is not intended 
to delude ? 

How much Popery makes of nuns and nunneries, to 
fire the imagination of young, romantic girls, and to in- 
duce them to seek seclusion from the world within 
monastic walls ! The abbess is a lady of rank, beauty, 
and exquisite taste ! The nuns are all damsels of 
beautiful face and form, the history of each marked by 
some romantic incidents which strongly excite our in- 
terest. And then the sacred inclosure is such a charm- 
ing spot in which to cultivate holiness, and where hap- 
piness is enjoyed by every inmate, but little below that 
of paradise itself! And then the pomp, show, and cer- 
emony of " taking the vail" are so arranged as to exalt 
the heroism and piety of the maiden that takes it, and 
as, if possible, to induce other maidens to do likewise. 
How the true history of any existing nunnery would 
give all these delusions to the winds — would prove 
them to be the prisons of confiding girls- — the houses 
of refuge for delinquent or disappointed lasses, or for 
daughters fleeing from domestic tyranny — and their 
parlors to be the lounging-places of immaculate priests ! 
And how a true narrative of those " taking the vail," 
would dissipate all romance concerning them ! 

Seymour, to whose " Pilgrimage" I have already al- 
luded, gives a very funny account of a ^'taking the 
vail," witnessed by him in Rome. It was in January. 
On approaching the monastery, the street, and vesti- 
bule, and church were strewed with flowers. The 
high altar was loaded with artificial flowers. The car- 



kirwan's letters. 207 



Elegant dress. Jeweled servant. Clothes every thing. 

dinal-vicar took his seat ; soon the Princess Borghese 
entered, leading a beautiful female, and presented her 
to the cardinal. Her beautiful chestnut-colored tresses 
fell like a vail around her ; her dress was white satin, 
richly damasked in gold ; on her head glittered a 
crown of diamonds ; her neck was covered with pre- 
cious stones, flashing through her ringlets ; her breast 
was gemmed with brilliants, set off by black velvet ; 
so that she sparkled and blazed in all the magnificence 
of the richest jewels in Rome ! All took her, of course, 
to be a youthful princess of vast wealth, renouncing the 
world for the cloister ! And yet this beautiful young 
woman was only a servant, and the daughter of a serv- 
ant, of the Borghese family ; that splendid hair was 
only a wig ; the jewelry belonged to her mistress, who 
took that occasion to display it ; and the sweet, lovely- 
looking girl in her dress, when divested of her robes, 
was a vulgar, clumsy, and unlettered old maid of forty ! 
And such are usually the nuns of Popery. And the 
whole scene was gotten up to gratify the vanity of the 
woman who wished to display her jewels, and to induce 
those not behind the curtain to believe that another ricli 
heiress of a noble house had renounced the vanities of 
the world for the seclusion of a cloister ! 

And this is only a specimen of the way and manner 
in which priests delude the people every where ! Take 
away the clothes in which they dress their mummery, 
and it would be only revolting. Gro, Sir, on Christ- 
mas day, or any high day, into your cathedral, and, 
after blowing out all the candles, and sending the boys 
with censers and incense to their seats, and taking oA 
the robes of the priests, and putting to silence the pro 



208 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

Barren foolery. A corpse dressed. Ridiculous stories. 

fessional singers, cause the priests to go through a high 
mass ! Why, Sir, you would laugh at the barren fool- 
ery ; and '' the awful, mysterious, and holy ceremony 
of the mass" would appear to you just as attractive as 
did the withering old maid, who was made a nun, to 
Seymour, when divested of her robes, her crown, and 
her jewels. Romanism is a corpse, and its ceremonies 
and canonicals are dresses put on to hide its putres- 
cence, and to induce belief in the vulgar that it is a 
living body. Sure am I that if any sensible mother 
would find her children, at the close of a summer's day, 
going through the senseless rounds through which I 
have seen about twenty cardinals go, dressed in their 
scarlet skullcaps and robes, at vespers in the Sistine, 
she would be disposed to whip them and send them to 
bed. 

To deceive and delude their people it is that priests 
and monks have fabricated the most false and ridicu- 
lous stories about the great and good men that have led 
on the blessed Reformation, and that have achieved the 
civil and religious liberty which we enjoy. If they have 
made their own adherents demigods, they have made 
the reformers demons. Who is ignorant of the Popish 
narratives of Luther's conferences with Satan — of the 
diabolical agencies which he wielded— and of his soul, 
on his death, flying away, leaving something like a 
smell of brimstone behind it ? The monkish legends 
of the days of Luther are as fall of stories to prove his 
Satanism, as is the life of St. Patrick of ridiculous mir- 
acles to prove his sanctity. And down to the present 
day an ignorant Papist will turn away horrified from 
the name of Luther, as it is said a demon will turn 



LETTERS. 209 



Calvin. Poor Bruley. Mrs. Bruley. 

away from the sign of the cross, or from a sprinkling 
of holy salt or of water. 

And similar stories are fabricated and circulated 
about the scholar and logician of the Reformation, the 
great Calvin. Here is the substance of a comment on 
Exodus, vii., 11, taken from the Douay Bible, printed 
in 1635, as quoted entire by Capper. Calvin, by words 
and money, persuaded a man in Greneva, by the name 
of Bruley, to feign himself dead, in order that, by a kind 
of Popish exorcism or fraud, he might bring him to life. 
But, alas for poor Bruley ! when he feigned to be dead, 
he absolutely died, and by a direct visitation of Provi-. 
dence ! And all Calvin's efforts could not restore breath 
to his body ! 0, if the reformer had only a toe-nail of 
St. Anthony, or an old tooth of St. Dominic, or some 
shreds from the garments, or some parings from the 
nails of some of the holy martyrs or virgins, poor Bru- 
ley might have lived again ! G-ood Mrs. Bruley con- 
sented to the agreement; but when she found that 
Calvin could not restore her husband, she was in a vi- 
olent passion, and called him a false apostle, and " a 
secret theefe, and a wicked murderer that had killed 
her husband," so that all Greneva knew, on the testi- 
mony of the hysterical Mrs. Bruley, that Calvin killed 
Bruley, but could not restore him to life ! And stories 
like these against the reformers, and the great and good 
men who have opposed Popery, are scarcely less nu- 
merous than are the miracles of Mary and Bambino. 
And all for the sake of prejudicing the vulgar mind 
against their character and writings. 

You, Sir, can not be ignorant of the history of the 
Vaudois or Waldensians, who kept the light of truth 



210 KIR wax's letters. 

Waldensians. Prince's visit. Horrible lie 

burning for so many ages in the valleys of Piedmont, 
when it had gone out in nearly all the earth besides ! 
Their history is a thrilling one, and is full of blood— of 
blood shed by Romish priests, and by orders from the 
Vatican. And the question arises how or why the 
house of Savoy could turn its arms so long and so cru- 
elly against a people so loyal, so moral, and so unof- 
fending ? It was because of the horrid representations 
made by Popish priests to the court. On a certain oc- 
casion, a prince of Savoy determined on a journey 
among the valleys of this wonderful people, of whom 
the bm^ning bush, as seen by Moses, was a fit emblem. 
Standing by the first Vaudois house to which he came, 
he saw a fine, healthy, well-formed boy, whose appear- 
ance excited liis astonishment. He sent for the pa- 
rents, who, with their other children, came around him. 
His astonishment increased. He spoke with them, 
and found them intelligent, well informed, and loyal. 
'^ And are all your people formed like you ?'' said the 
prmce to the peasant. '* Yes, all,'' was the reply. 
He made them open their mouths, that he might see 
their teeth, when there was an increase of his wonder. 
'•How is this?" said he, turning to his attendants; 
'•we have been always informed by our priests that 
these people were monsters — that they had but one 
eye, which was in the middle of their foreheads — and 
that they had double rows of teeth; and, instead of 
finding them the horrible creatures which we have been 
informed they were, we find them in form, and fash- 
ion, and mind like ourselves." 

Here, Sir, is the secret of the barbarit}' of the prin- 
ces of Savoy to the Waldensian people. That people 



211 

Priest's revenge. Harpies. Cry of blood. 

refused to bow their necks to the Papal yoke; they 
would not surrender the Bible for the Missal ; with 
hearts as firm as the towering Alps, amid whose val- 
leys they reside, they resisted every effort to induce 
them to surrender their ancient faith ; and hence the 
bafiled priests represented them as monsters — as the 
descendants, perhaps, of the Harpies, so intolerably dis- 
gusting, as sung by Yirgil. Nor have I a doubt but 
that the princes who sent their armies into those peace- 
ful valleys, with orders to spare neither age nor sex, 
were deluded by wicked priests into the belief that 
they were seeking to extirpate a race of monsters from 
the earth, instead of slaughtering a race of Christians, 
as simple, as pious, as harmless, as steadfast, as heroic 
as any which the world has ever known. And as I 
recently wandered along the banks of the Po, whose 
waters were once crimsoned with the blood of slaugh- 
tered "Waldensians, and rode along the valleys through 
which the minions of the Pope so often carried fire and 
sword, I almost imagined that I could hear the blood 
of the slain crying to Heaven, and saying, 

'* Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; 
Even those who kept thy truth so pure of old, 

When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones. 

Forget not — in thy book record their groans — 
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold, 
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled 
Mother with infant down the rocks." 

Nor, Sir, has this method of deluding the people been 
surrendered by the priests. It is practiced, where it 
can be, in all shapes and forms in our own day. '' I 
was traveling up to our valleys in my char-h-bnnc," 



2i2 

Pastor's ride. Priest's duty. Father confessors. 

said the interesting Vaudois pastor of Turin to me, 
" and took in a plain man that I overtook on the way. 
I soon found that he was a Papist. After some con- 
versation, he asked me where I was going ? I told 
him I was going on a visit to our people. He asked 
me if I was a Waldensian ; and on telling him that I 
was, he eyed me from head to foot with astonishment. 
Seeing no deadly weapons ahout me, and as I treated 
him in the kindest manner, he became somewhat com- 
posed ; hut he finally left my carriage, preferring to 
walk rather than to continue in so doubtful, if not dan- 
gerous a position as that of riding with a leader among 
a people respecting whom the priests told him so many 
monstrous stories." Indeed, one of the chief duties of 
the priests is to sow jealousies and hatred among their 
people toward all who are not Papists. To what an 
awfal extent this is carried in Ireland, where, until re- 
cently, the Papist regarded the Protestant as his deadly 
enemy ! See how Profestant ministers are denounced, 
and Protestant books forbidden, and Protestant schools 
abandoned — see how, even in our free and happy land, 
the priests teach theu' people to look upon every thing 
Protestant as white with leprosy. How soon do our 
Protestants see, in the altered demeanor of their serv- 
ants, the bad influences of those '' father confessors," 
who go prowling after silly Irish men and women 
through the country, scaring them up to confess their 
sins, and to pay for the privilege ! 

Nor are even their own people exempt from the de- 
ceivings of the priests, who feel that they have a divine 
warrant to fleece their flocks as they can, and to par- 
don one another when they sin. I will not vouch for 



LETTERS. 213 



The beer man. Bridge of Purgatory. A diimer party. 

the truth of the following story, but I will give it to 
you just as I received it from the lips of one of the 
most honored and eloquent ministers of Britain, whose 
name is known and revered on both sides of the At- 
lantic. He asserted its entire truth. There lived a 
poor man, in one of the cities of Britain, who made his 
support by selling beer. He was honest, and punctual 
in his payments, and won the entire confidence of the 
brewer. He died ; and, as the priest stated, his soul 
went to Purgatory. His widow carried on the busi- 
ness, and sent for one barrel of beer after another, un- 
til she was in debt to the brewer about one hundred 
pounds. The brewer, who was a Papist, went to make 
inquiry as to the cause of this large indebtedness. ' ' And 
have you not heard of the terrible accident that has 
happened?" said the woman. '^What is it?" asked 
the brewer. " The bridge of Purgatory is broken," was 
the reply, ''and it takes a deal of money to repair it ; 
and Father O'Flanagan is very faithful in collecting- 
money to repair it, bless his soul ; and when the bridge 
is finished, so that my poor husband can get across, then 
I will strive to pay you all." 

The brewer did not like to be thus swindled through 
the priest, and laid his plans to get his money. He 
made a large dinner party, to which he invited the bish- 
op, several priests, among whom was Father O'Flan- 
agan, and a few other friends. After the punch began 
to work a little, he rung a bell, which was the signal 
for the introduction of the widow from the beer-shop. 
'' Have you heard, your reverence," said the brewer to 
the bishop, " of the awful accident that has occurred ?" 
''What is it?" said the bishop, with excited interest. 



214 

Father O'Flanagan. A check. Purgatory profitable. 

'' Father O'Flanagan, will you tell the bishop about 
the breaking down of the bridge of Purgatory ?" said 
the brewer. Father O'Flanagan blushed, looked at the 
woman, and then into his tumbler of punch, and was 
silent. The fraud was revealed ; there was the poor 
woman to prove its truth ; and the brewer declared 
that unless the one hundred pounds were paid down, 
he would expose the whole affair. The bishop gave 
his check for the amount — ^the old beer-woman was 
glad — the party broke up ; and the breaking of the 
bridge of Purgatory cured the brewer of his Popery. I 
confess to you. Sir, that the story seemed to me incred- 
ible when I heard it, and I was for placing it on the 
same shelf with the monkish stories about Luther and 
Calvin ; but after seeing what I saw, and hearing what 
I heard in Naples, Rome, Sardinia, and Ireland — after 
a more extended acquaintance with the profligacy of 
priests, their want of principle, and their love of money, 
I see no reason, in the nature of things, to doubt the 
story of the Rev. Father O'Flanagan. Sure I am that 
the fiction of Purgatory is made to yield millions every 
year to the priests, and in ways no more justifiable than 
that adopted with the poor widow that sold beer. 

Such are the ways and the manner in which the 
priests of Romanism seek to deceive, to delude, and to 
prejudice the minds of their people ; and all for the 
base purpose of continuing their own bad dominion, 
and of preventing the people firom coming to the knowl- 
edge of the truth. No Grospel truth is left unclouded 
— no good man is left unabused— no good book is left 
out of the Index — bonfires are made of Bibles — no seed 
that can bear the fruit of discord is left unsown — fables 



kirwan's letters. 215 

Stop at nothing. Passing events. Man in the Almanac. 

are manufactured without end— -miracles are made to 
order— history and philosophy are libeled — Bacon is 
made a dunce — Luther a devil — and Cranmer a knave, 
when required to keep the people in shackles, to oppose 
the influence of Protestantism, or to make people pass 
to heaven through the toll-gatS of the priest. I have 
just charity enough for them to believe that they will 
stop at nothing that promotes their ends — that they will 
respect no law of religion, humanity, or propriety that 
will cross their path. This will seem to you, and to 
many of my readers, very uncharitable ; but I appeal 
to the history of Romanism in all lands for its correct- 
ness. I appeal to the events now transpiring in Naples, 
Rome, Florence, and Ireland, to sustain me. If you, 
Sir, with your high reputation, should, on the perusal 
of these letters, openly declare yourself Protestant, they 
would serve you here, as they have done the Duke of 
Norfolk in England on his recent renunciation of Pop- 
ery. There is not a priest or a Protestant renegade 
that can scribble a line, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
that would not be out upon you ; and if they would not 
transfix you, as is the man in the Almanac, into whom 
the signs of the zodiac are pouring their arrows, it is 
because, like Achilles, you were baptized in the Styx. 
And why is it. Sir, that Papal priests resort to these 
frauds and deceivings ? Why is it they seek to prej- 
udice their people against all other people, and to sep- 
arate them from all the humanizing influences of relig- 
ious and social intercourse ? Why is it they prevent 
their people from thinking — from examining for them- 
selves truths and topics which demand our belief? 
They know the feebleness of their position, and the 



216 

Priests deserve Purgatory. 



weakness of their cause ; and that, unless they hedge 
up their people on all sides, their craft is gone. 

I would not do these priests evil. "Were it in my 
power, I would convert them all. But if there is a class 
of persons living that deserve a good long residence in 
Purgatory, they are tke men. And should they go 
there, and should the bridge break down, I would not 
give Father O'Flanagan a penny to build it— at least 
for one year. 

With great respect, yours. 



kirwan's letters. 217 

Spirit of Romanism. Unchanged. Can not change. 



LETTER XX II I. 

Rome Intolerant.— Persecutions sanctioned. — Bishops sworn to per 
secute — Deposed if they do not. — Wiseman's reply. — Proofs of In 
tolerance — Waldenses — Castelnau — Bezieres — Morland's Address 
— St. Bartholomew — Edict of Nantes revoked — Irish Massacre of 
1641 — other Evidences. — Two Skins. 

My dear Sir, — ^I desire in the present letter to ask 
your attention, and that of my readers, to the spirit 
which Romanism cherishes and manifests toward all 
who deny its claims and reject its dogmas. Unless 1 
mistake the character of your mind, you will agree 
with me that it is only cruel in principle and in action. 

But you will meet me at the threshold with the state- 
ment that Romanism has greatly changed in these lat- 
ter days, both in its principles and conduct. If so, 
where is her infallibility ? If so, her main foundation 
is gone. No, Sir ; her infallibility places her beyond 
the reach of improvement, and stereotypes equally her 
truth and her falsehood, her divinity and her demonism. 
Nor will she thank you, or any body else, for excusing 
her on the ground of a change of principle, as such an 
excuse stultifies her boast, and subjects her pretensions 
to the ridicule of all men. I admit that in this, and 
many countries of Europe, she can not indulge her 
ferocious spirit, or even openly avow her principles ; 
but is forced quietness any evidence of a change of 
principle ? Do you not know that opinions are often 

K 



f 



218 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

ITie inquisitor'3 heart. Principles. Church sanction. 

cherished which can not he defended, and that a wick- 
ed spirit often rages the more intensely because it can 
not give vent to its fury ? I assure you that even 
among ourselves the heart of an inquisitor lies conceal- 
ed under the long coat of many an imported priest ; 
and that, should circumstances permit, we would have 
our Dominies and Torquemadas in New York as in 
Rome, in Baltimore as in Seville, and on the banks of 
the Ohio and Mississippi as on the banks of the Tagus 
or the Duero. Because burning stones are not shoot- 
ing upward from its summit, and rivers of burning lava 
are not flowing down its sides, we must not conclude 
that the internal fires of old Vesuvius are extinsriished. 

The vengeful and persecuting spirit which Rome has 
exhibited is characteristic, and is founded on her prin- 
ciples. This spiiit has received the sanction of Popes 
and councils, and is therefore among the things upon 
which the Church has pronounced its infallible decis- 
ions. If Pius IX. pronounces against persecution, what 
becomes of the infallibility of Lucius III., who issued 
a bull authorizing it and exhorting to it ? If a coun- 
cil should now pronounce against persecution, what be- 
comes of the infallibility of the famous Lateran Coun- 
cil of 1215, or of the Council of Trent, or of the many 
other councils that sanctioned it ? Indeed, the priest 
that would assert that Romanism has changed her prin- 
ciples on the subject of persecution, would be sent by 
his bishop to Jericho until his beard or his brains grew. 

This spirit of persecution is taught in the Canon Law 
of the Church, which is made up of the decrees of 
councils, the bulls and decretals of Popes, and the 
writings of the Fathers — a law under which every Pa- 



LETTERS. 219 



Canon law. Bishop's oath. They keep it 

pist is placed, and which the officers of the Church are 
bound to administer. And this law, as you must know, 
is based on the assumption that the Pope's authority 
extends over all nominal Christians, and that none of 
us, by any dissent, can place ourselves beyond his juris- 
diction, or beyond the reach of this law ! So that all 
of us who call ourselves Christians, and who submit 
not to the Pope, are to be dealt with as heretics, and 
in the way and fashion which this law prescribes ! And 
as bishops are the chief police-officers of the Pope for 
enfort)ing the Canon Law, and for inflicting its pains 
and penalties, before they receive the mitre or the pal- 
lium, made from the wool of holy sheep, they are 
obliged to swear as follows : " Heretics, schismatics, or 
rebels against our lord the Pope, or his successors, I 
will persecute and fight against to the utmost of my 
power." And lest an oath should be disregarded, it is 
provided, ''that if a bishop shall have been negligent 
or remiss in purging his diocese of heretical pravity, as 
soon as this is made apparent by sure evidence, he shall 
be deposed from his episcopal office, and in his place 
shall be substituted a fit person who will and can con- 
found the heretical pravity." The effects of this oath, 
and of this threat to keep up its remembrance, the 
world knows. Bishops have been the butchers of here- 
tics — that is, of Protestant Christians. To prove their 
fidelity to their oath, and to retain their mitre upon 
their brow, they have in cruelty out-Heroded Herod, 
and out-Neroed Nero. They have stained all their gar- 
ments in blood, and have pronounced the benedictions 
of Heaven upon men who have shed the blood of their 
fellow-men, and for no earthly reason but their rejec- 



220 kirwan's letters. 

Cardinal Wiseman. Veracity. How with our bishops. 

tion of the frivolous, and contemptible, and unreason- 
able dogmas of the priest. 

To this oath, taken by bishops when receiving their 
badges of office from their lord and master, some at- 
tention has been recently excited in England. Cardi- 
nal Wiseman has been catechized in reference to it ; 
and although the policy of bishops is to answer no ques- 
tions, yet he was so questioned as to compel a reply. 
And what, think you, was his reply ? He did not deny 
the taking of such an oath, for the oath itself could be 
produced ; but he asserted that, when administered to 
British bishops, the above clause was omitted! The 
veracity of Nicholas of Westminster on this point has 
been called in question by some, but with that you and 
I have little to do. If the fact is as he states, it is a 
fall admission that the clause is in the oath. And, if 
possible, I should like you to j&nd out whether the grace 
extended to England by the Holy Apostolic See has 
also been extended to us in this heretical land ; wheth- 
er slippery John of New York, and the " Very Rev. P. 
R. Kenrick, V. G-.," author of the wonderfully erudite 
book, " The Holy House of Loretto," were so kind to- 
ward us as to ask to have that clause omitted when 
they renounced their manhood, and swore allegiance to 
the despotism of Rome. Is the oath upon their souls 
''to persecute and fight against us to the utmost of 
their power ?" I firmly believe it is. 

So that Rome persecutes on principle, and swears all 
her bishops " to persecute all heretics to the utmost of 
their power ;" and when she renounces the principles 
of persecution, she ceases to be an infallible Church. 
To sustain her character, she is bound to persecute 



LETTERS. 221 



Fearful dilemma. Testimony. Waldenses. 

whenever and wherever she can. To amend or reform 
her principles will be her death, and without benefit 
of clergy. How fearful the position in which her in- 
fallibility places her ; her only alternative is death or 
intolerance, and the dilemma of her bishops is perjury 
or persecution. Horrible system ! 

And what a mass of testimony does the history of 
the world furnish to prove her fidelity to her principles, 
and the sleepless perseverance of her bishops in " per- 
secuting and fighting against heretics, schismatics, and 
rebels against our lord the Pope !" She has set up a 
system of belief not merely differing from, but in oppo- 
sition to that of the Scriptures, and has imposed it on 
the world as of divine authority. While she has for- 
bidden the Bible to the people, she commands 'subjec- 
tion to her own system, which the vast majority of 
men can not comprehend. Without their consent, she 
has subjected to her authority all living within the 
shadow of her sceptre, and has subjected to the sever- 
est penalties all who refuse her obedience. Romish 
persecution of those who could not receive as doctrines 
of Gi-od her awful assumptions and silly ceremonials, 
have been the most bloody and savage which the world 
has ever witnessed. And where, in proof of this, shall 
we commence our historic evidence ? 

Shall we begin with the Waldenses ? The history 
of this people lies before me. Cooped up in secluded 
valleys, at the foot of the Alps, they are supposed to 
be the descendants of Christians who sought refuge 
from the barbarian hordes that ravaged Italy during 
the decline of the Roman empire. They were a peo- 
pie simple, industrious, pious, scriptural in their faith 



222 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

Bloodhounds. Castelnau. Bezi^res sacked. 

and worship, and most unoffending in their conduct to 
all men. In two things they were as immovable as 
the Alps : they would not give up their Bibles, nor ac- 
knowledge the claims of the Pope. These were their 
only offenses, and for these they were declared heretics, 
and the bloodhounds of Rome, the bishops and inquis- 
itors, were let loose on them. Two vagabond and bru- 
tal monks were sent from Rome to see that justice was 
meted out to the heretics. They deposed the kind 
bishops of the district for permitting the heresy, and 
substituted wolves in thek place. Castelnau, a man 
of cruel heart, was sent as legate. Raymond of Tou- 
louse was excommunicated because he refused to join 
in the bloody crusade, but was made finally to consent 
by the cruel treatment of the Pope and Castelnau. 
About three hundred thousand men were let loose upon 
this people, to punish them for the sin of worshiping 
Grod as did their fathers and the apostles. The first 
outburst of their fury was on the town of Bezieres, con- 
taining about sixty thousand persons. The legate gave 
up the people to slaughter, and the town to pillage and 
flames. " But how," said an officer, " can we distin- 
guish the Catholic from the heretic ?" And what was 
the reply of the atrocious legate, Castelnau ? It is 
known, to the confusion of Rome, in all the earth : 
"Kill all; the Lord will know his oivn.^^ And every 
being was slain, and the town was consumed by fire ! 
And this was only the beginning of sorrows. For 
nearly fifty years was this carnage continued. Battle 
followed battle — city was. burned after city — valley 
was entered after valley, until the rugged yet fair her- 
itage of this pious and simple people was converted 



kirwan's letters. 223 

A million slain. Mori and. St. Bartholomew. 

into a howling wilderness — until a million of their 
number, under the sabre and tread of the minions of 
Popery, were made to bite the dust ! After reciting a 
list of barbarities, Morland, the high-minded envoy of 
Cromwell to Turin, thus addressed the Duke of Savoy : 
" "What need I mention more, though I could reckon 
up very many cruelties of the same kind, if I were not 
astonished at the very thought of them. If all the ty- 
rants of all times and ages were alive again, they would 
be ashamed when they should find that they had con- 
trived nothing in comparison with these things that 
might be reputed barbarous and inhuman. Heaven 
itself seems astonished with the crimes of dying men, 
and the very earth to blush, being discolored with the 
gore-blood of so many innocent persons." And all the 
guilt of this enormous barbarity lies on the soul of the 
Papal Church. 0, Sir, if you have never read, do read 
the history of the Waldenses. It has more than the 
interest of fiction, and is a fearful argument against 
Popery. 

Shall we next consider the Massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew, in France, and the Revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes ? Every thing had been arranged by the per- 
fidious Catharine and her son Charles IX. for the slaugh- 
ter of the Huguenots. A royal marriage was arranged 
for the purpose of collecting in Paris the chief Prot- 
estant nobility of the kingdom. Coligny lay in his 
chamber, wounded by the hired assassin of the court ; 
Mauravel, surrounded by his friends — the houses of the 
Protestants were all marked — the badges of the luiir- 
derers were all arranged — the houses of Papists were 
supplied with torches — arms were supplied to the as- 



224 kirwan's letters. 

The signal. Coligny. Paris a slaughter-house. 

sassins, and at midniglit the alarm-bell was rung from 
St. Grermain. At the concerted signal, the Palais, the 
Tuileries, the banks of the Seine, the public places, the 
streets, the large edifices, sacred and profane, became 
illuminated as if by magic. In almost every window 
there was a blazing torch. And this sudden blaze was 
to illumine the path of the murderers to the houses of 
their victims. The noble and wounded Coligny, and 
up to his death caressed and flattered by the queen- 
mother and her son, was the first victim. He fell un- 
der the sabres and daggers of Besme, Petrucci, and 
Sarlabous. Tired of waiting the result, Henry of Guise 
called from below, '' Besme, have you done ?" " It is 
done," was the reply ; and then, taking the dead body, 
they threw it out of the window, that Henry might 
judge for himself. The shouts of the murderers urg- 
ing each other to blood, and the wailings of men, wom- 
en, and children, as they were falling beneath their 
blows, were heard in every street and lane of Paris. 
The bright sun of the 24th of August, 1572, revealed 
the city converted into a vast slaughter-house. The 
massacre continued seven days in Paris. From the 
capital it extended to the provinces ; nor for two 
months was the murderous sword returned to the scab- 
bard ; nor until, according to Sully, seventy thousand, 
or, according to Perefixe, one hundred thousand Prot- 
estants were slain. And how were the tidings of this 
bloody sacrifice to the Moloch of Popery, which spread 
consternation through the world, received at Rome ? 
With thanksgivings to Heaven, and with the roaring 
of cannon from its walls. A Te Deum was sung, at 
which the Pope and his court attended ; a medal was 



LETTERS. 225 



Picture in the Vatican. Louis XIV. Cruelties. 

struck to commemorate the event ; and a picture of 
the massacre was added to the embellishments of the 
Vatican, to commemorate to all ages the triumph of 
the Church over her enemies ! Upon that picture, Sir, 
I have gazed with mine own eyes in the ante-room of 
the Sistine ; and if Rome has changed her principles 
on persecution, why permit that picture to perpetuate 
her shame ? 

The Massacre of St. Bartholomew was followed by 
fearful civil wars, in which it is supposed that one 
million of men were slain. These were brought to a 
close by the Edict of Nantes, published by Henry IV. 
in 1598, and which secured to the Protestants the free 
exercise of their religion. But Henry was murdered ; 
and his illustrious minister. Sully, was exchanged for 
the priest, Richelieu. The Jesuits got the ear of Louis 
XIV., and soon clouds of portentous aspect were seen 
rapidly collecting over the Huguenots. They were re- 
moved from office. Their churches were torn down. 
They were prevented from assembling for worship. 
Their children were torn from them at seven years of 
age by the priests, to be educated as Papists. These 
cruelties drove them to despair. They emigrated in 
great numbers. Soon they were prevented from leav- 
ing the country ; their ministers were executed ; boot- 
ed and spurred missionaries were every where among 
the people ; the sick, who recovered after refusing the 
sacraments of Romanism, if men, were sent to the 
galleys, and if women, to perpetual imprisonment and 
to penances ; and if they died without submission to 
the Church, their dead bodies were to be drawn on a 
hurdle and cast upon a dung-heap ! These awful so- 

K2 



226 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

Huguenots scattered. Irish massacre. Lough Erne. 

verities soon reduced the Huguenots to the verge of 
total extinction ; and from beginning to end they were 
instigated, and in gTcat part inflicted by Romish priests. 
In the funeral oration of Flechier for Le Tellier the 
Jesuit, he ascribes to him the high honor of being the 
author of that " work of Grod," the Revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, and of the bloody cruelties that fol- 
lowed ! 

Shall we next consider the Irish St. Bartholomew of 
1641 ? The chapter is a bloody one. Fired by their 
priests, and by the Popish gentry whose property had 
been confiscated during preceding disturbances, a plan 
was concerted^ to which the perfidious Charles was no 
stranger, to cut off the Protestants of the island. A 
chief actor in the bloody tragedy was Ever M^Mahon, 
Romish bishop of Down, who was true to his oath ^^to 
persecute and fight against heretics to the utmost of 
his power." Bad as was that of France, the Irish Bar- 
tholomew was worse. I shudder while I quote from 
histories before me some of the narratives connected 
with this tragedy. On the Sabbath before the com- 
mencement of the massacre, the priests gave the wafer 
to the people, and sent them out with an exhortation 
to kill the Protestants, and to seize their property, as a 
certain preservative against the pains of Purgatory ! A 
.company of nearly one hundred, men, women, and chil- 
dren, were driven upon the ice on Lough Erne ; having 
pushed them as far as they could go in safety, they 
flung the infants, torn from their mothers' arms, toward 
the point where the ice was weakest, and, in seeking 
to rescue them, all perished save two. Women were 
^stripped naked, and sent into the woods — to perish. 



KIR WAN's LETTERS. 227 

Various deaths. Sir W. Jones. Other testimony. 

Many were sportfully drowned ; many hung ; many 
stabbed to death ; many boiled and roasted ; many 
were hewn to pieces ; many had their bellies ripped 
up, and their bowels torn out ; many were driven into 
houses, and were burned in them ; many were torn to 
pieces with dogs ; and in some cases, one end of the in- 
testines was tied to a tree, and the person was driven 
round the tree until his bowels were all torn out ! The 
account of the numbers who thus cruelly perished 
varies ; but some judicious historians say that it could 
not be less than 200,000. Of this awful massacre, Sii 
William Jones says, '^ If we look into the sufferings 
of the first Christians under the cruel tyranny of the 
heathen emperors, we shall not find any one kingdom, 
though of a far larger extent than Ireland, where more 
Christians suffered, or more unparalleled cruelties were 
acted within the space of the fu'st two months after the 
breaking out of this rebellion." Eastern barbarians 
never inflicted upon the most base wretches such exe- 
crable cruelty. And all the blood there shed lies upon 
the soul, if soul it has, of the Papal Church. 

But, Sir, the time would fail me, as would your pa- 
tience and that of my readers, to give, in testimony, 
the persecutions of Italy, of Spain, of Poland, of Aus- 
tria, of Bavaria ; or, coming down to our own times, of 
Zillerthal, of Madeira ; or, coming down to our own day, 
of Florence, of Naples, of France, of Ireland. The prin- 
ciples of Popery are unchanged, and so is her conduct 
where she can wisely carry out her principles. Did she 
not put up the Inquisition as a slaughter-house for her- 
etics, and is not the Inquisition vindicated in a work 
dedicated to yourself, and does not the Papal Church 



228 kirwan's letters. 

Auto da fe. No letting off. See ! See ! 

now send the whole Protestant world to perdition? 
And what better is this than making a great auto da 
fe — ^piling up the dry stubble as mountains, binding 
millions of Protestants upon the pile, and then com- 
manding the Grod of heaven to apply the torch, and 
consume them all ! Why, Sir, the cruelties of the 
French or of the Irish St. Bartholomew are mercy when 
compared to this ! It is the very sublime of the hor- 
rible ! 

I would not be guilty of the unfairness of making 
the children accountable for the sins of their fathers 
when they reject their principles and abandon their 
practices ; but when they hold their principles, and ex- 
cuse then' practices, and walk in their footsteps where 
and when they can, then there is no letting of them 
off. The most barbarous cruelty on record is that per- 
petrated in the name of G-od, and under the sanction 
of religion. Has Rome changed her principles ? She 
can not. Have bishops and priests changed theirs ? 
They dare not. See how, in Home, Naples, Austria, 
they fetter the press. See how, in Ireland, they oppose 
the Bible and the education of the people. See how, in 
France, they sympathize with Louis Napoleon to shackle 
the press, to drive Protestants from all places of trust, 
and to monopolize the education of the people. See 
how, in Mexico and Cuba, they wall out all liberty of 
conscience, and prevent freedom of worship. With us. 
Sir, they are shy of avowing their principles. Here 
every thing is against them ; but where they have the 
power, they are as intolerant as was Hildebrand. These 
priests from Maynooth and St. Omer's carry, in the same 
bag with their vestments, two skins, that of a lion and 



kirwan's letters. 229 

Two skins. 

a fox. For the present, like slippery John, they weai 
that of the fox; but when the fit time comes, it will 
be soon doffed for that of the lion. Are these priests 
the men for our country ? Should they be trusted ? 
With great respect, yours 



230 kirwan's letters. 

Popery has one object. Influence on Papal nations. 



LETTER XXIV. 

Bad influence of Popery on the Nations. — Results from its Principles. — 
No exceptions. — Naples. — -Rome. — Sardinia. — Female Degradation. 
— Ireland. — Protestant and Papal States compared. — Spain. — Colo- 
nies of Papal States. — Is Popery the best Religion for our Country ? 
— Protestantism has made the United States what they are. — What 
will they become if surrendered to the Jesuit and the Priest ? 

My DEAR Sir, — Up to this point I have sought to 
place before you what I consider to be the true char- 
acter of the Romish Church, of its priests, its cere- ^ 
monies, its impostures, and spirit. And my object in J 
all this is avowed — ^to demonstrate to you, and to the ^ 
entire American people, so far as I can arrest their 
^ attention, that nothing but evil — ^unmingled evil — can 
' be expected from the spread of Popery in this land. 
Whatever may be its guises, or promises, or honeyed 
words, it has but one object in view, and that is its 
own elevation, and at whatever expense. And wher- 
ever it has reached its desired elevation, it has shed the 
deadly shadow of the upas tree upon all the highest 
and dearest interests of humanity. And as confirma- 
tory of the statements already made, and of the just 
inferences from those statements, I wish, in the pres- 
ent letter, to ask your attention to the influence of Pop- 
ery on Papal nations. Unless I greatly mistake, you 
will find here an argument of overwhelming power for 
its rejection. 



kirwan's letters. 231 

Bad on principle. All under the Pope. No exception. 

Its baleful national influence we might infer from 
its principles, and from their bearing upon individuals. 
It banishes the Bible from society. The Church does 
all the thinking ; the people have only to believe. It 
brands '' private reasoning" as heresy, and, unless aban- 
doned, as a damning sin. Grod is the source of truth ; 
but he has committed it to his Church, and the Church 
has committed it to the priest, and the people must go 
to the priest for it, and unless they do, they are damned ! 
Thus it brings every person to the knee of the priest, 
to receive, as the truth of Heaven, whatever sense or 
nonsense he may utter in the name of the Church, 
without any right to question it, and without any 
means to authenticate it ! It subjects the- people to 
the priest, the priest to the bishop, the bishop to the 
Pope, and it makes no matter what may be the char- 
acter of the Pope — whether he be a tyrant, like Hilde- 
brand — a bloody wretch, like Julius — an infidel, like 
Leo — or the very pink of lechers and incarnate devils, 
with Borgia — ^he is the vicar of Jesus Christ, and the 
infallible head of the Church ! The course, from which 
it has never turned aside, save to recruit its strength, 
is to involve the people in darkness ; to create and to 
increase a superstitious reverence for the ghostly power 
of the Church ; to render the masses subservient to 
the priest ; and to bring all the powers of the individ- 
ual and of the state into obedience to the power which 
she claims to exercise by divine right. And as Popery 
rises to the heights of its aspirations, the people sink 
into darkness and degradation. If there is an excep- 
tion to this rule, where is it to be found ? 

Is it to be found in Naples ? Would that I could 



232 



LETTERS. 



( 



Not Naples. Priests' paradise. The people. 

place before your mind the moral picture of Naples, as 
it now lies before my own. There Popery has all 
things to its mind. The king, the queen, the govern- 
ment, the people, the press, the army, the navy, all the 
appliances of education, are under its control. And 
never did you see a peacock flu-ting its gaudy feathers 
on a summer's day with more ostentatious pride than 
do the priests of Rome their regimentals along the 
sunny highways of Naples. Their very tread shows 
their consciousness of the firmness of the ground on 
which they stand, and their ah' testifies to their feeling 
of security. You meet them every where in numbers 
beyond number, fat, sleek, and well dressed^ and testi- 
fying by their hearty laugh, their lordly port, their sat- 
isfied look, that they are at home. And if for priests 
there is an earthly paradise, it is Naples. Rome is 
nothing to it in this respect. But when you turn to 
the people, alas ! what a sight ! Poverty, wretched- 
ness, rags, lazzaroni, beggars, soldiers, mountebanks, 
and donkeys, meet you every where. The masses of 
the people are ignorant, superstitious, and immoral be- 
yond your conception. And as you pass from the cities 
and large towns through the country, the most astound- 
ing evidences meet you every where, that you are 
among a semi-barbarous, superstitious, illiterate, and 
most degraded people. And the despotism of Russia, 
or of Turkey, is American liberty in comparison with 
the horrid despotism of Naples ! If Popery, as a sys- 
tem, is a blessing, as the ^' Very Rev. P. R. Kenrick, 
V. Gr.," would have us believe, judging from Naples, it 
reserves its blessings for the priests, and showers its 
curses on the people. Popery, like the sun in mid- 



kirwan's letters. 233 

Gifts of Popery. Not in Rome. Dreams dissipated. 

heaven, has all Naples to itself ; and intolerable des- 
potism, abject poverty, stupid ignorance, gross super- 
stition, and priestly arrogance, are the gifts and bless- 
ings which she confers on the people. Apply the rule 
w^here you may, and you will find that Popery and pov- 
erty, priests and beggars, always go together. 

Is the exception to be found in Rome, or the States 
of the Church ? Will you turn to my seventeenth and 
eighteenth letters, and read them again, with a view 
to answer this question ? We read here at home of 
" old Romans," '' brave," '' noble," " generous Ro- 
mans ;" our conceptions of them are large, generous, 
and manly. Their generals are Csesars ; their patriots 
are all Cincinnati ; their soldiers are all like those of 
the seventh legion ; and their women are all Cornelias 
or Julias. But on entering Rome, or in riding through 
the States of the Church, these dreams all vanish, not 
leaving a wreck behind. And you can scarcely imag- 
ine that the ignorant, servile, poverty-smitten, deceiv- 
ing, lying, superstitious people that you every where 
meet, can be the descendants of the men who planted 
the eagles of victory at the extremes of the world. In- 
deed, I felt like turning my valet out of my room when, 
on paying him his wages, he bowed his knee servilely 
before me, and impressed his kisses on my hand. Can 
this fawning dog, said I, be a descendant of the old 
Romans ? Next to the Neapolitans, the subjects of the 
Pope are the most degraded people in Europe ; and 
why the Neapolitans should have the pre-eminence in 
degradation, I know not, save on the principle that the 
filth and feculence of a mountain are usually washed 
to its base, whence they send up their putrid cxhala- 



234 

Fruits in Jlome. In Sardinia. Army of women. 

tions. If the Popish system is a blessing, what pre- 
vents it from bearing the richest fruits in Italy ? And 
what are its fruits there at this hour ? Swarms of 
priests, monks, nuns, and beggars; poverty, ignorance, 
superstition ; the press shackled ; no liberty, civil or 
religious ; no security of property ; no Bible ; no Sab- 
bath ; splendid churches converted into opera-houses, 
with no congregations ; and lying wonders without 
number or end. 

Is the exception to be found in Sardinia ? You feel, 
on entering Sardinia, that you are beyond the shadow 
of the sceptre of Pio Nono, from the improved condition 
of the people, and the evidences of growth which every 
where present themselves ; but yet you feel that you 
are in a Papal country, where Popery is the religion 
of the people, and where, save amid the valleys of Pied- 
mont, Popery has had for ages an open field. And yet 
the degradation of the masses is most striking. They 
are tunneling the Appenines for a rail- way from Turin 
to Grenoa, and, in June last, I saw an army of women 
performing the work of horses, carrying on their backs, 
in baskets, the stones and clay from those tunnels, and 
depositing them in the valleys, over which they are 
raising embankments. I saw women carrying lime- 
stones from the quarries to the kilns in which they 
were burned ! This is a sample of the civilization 
which Popery has conferred on Sardinia. While there 
is an improvement upon Rome and Naples in this coun- 
try, yet the fruits of Romanism are mainly the same. 
Unless the present current of affairs is checked by Rome 
and Austria, wh v are exerting all their power to do it, 
p better day r dawning upon the dominions of the 



235 

Home of freemen. In Ireland, Its curse. 

house of Savoy. The exiles from Florence and Lower 
Italy, the persecuted for conscience sake, find refuge 
there. Because the liberty of thinking and of worship 
are secured there, Turin is rising like an American 
city. But the blessings it possesses beyond Rome or 
Naples it owes to the fact that its Popery is less intense. 

Is the exception to be found in Ireland — poor, de- 
graded, yet beautiful and noble Ireland ? There you 
find a warm-hearted, generous, imaginative, impulsive, 
and noble people, and, as the world knows, capable of 
the highest improvement, and what is their state ? Gro 
to their holy wells and holy places — ^to their fairs, their 
villages, their cabins, and what is their state ? Yisit 
them wherever in other lands they congregate, as in 
the Cowgate at Edinburgh, and what is their state ? 
See them,, as in their native dress they are landed on 
our shores, and follow them to their places of carousal, 
and what is their state ? The Papal population of Ire- 
land are greater Papists than the Pope himself, and are 
more under priestly influence than the people of Rome 
— far more — and what good has Popery done them or 
their island ? The curse of Ireland has been, and now 
is, its Popery. Its lands are fertile — its climate is 
genial — its people are industrious ; but the influence 
of the priest, like the breath of the sirocco, has blight- 
ed the land — ^has debased its people — has made them 
a by- word in all the lands of their dispersion. 

The battle between Popery and Protestantism, as to 
their doctrinal basis, has been often fought ; and, when 
fairly fought, has been always lost by the priest. Nor 
can it be otherwise. If the Bible is true, Popery is a 
false system — and, unless the senses of man are made 



f 



236 kirwan's letters. 

Lying wonders. Systems compared. Their effects 

to deceive, it is a system of lying wonders. If there is 
any moral position on which the mind of this age is 
satisfied, it is that Popery is the mystery of iniquity. 
And now, for three hundred years, these two systems 
have existed side by side ; and, as if on trial before 
heaven and earth, they have each been exerting their 
influence for the purpose of manifesting their legiti- 
mate effects. And what. Sir, are the results ? What 
is the effect of each on human liberty. Compare Na- 
ples, Rome, and Austria, with England, Prussia, and 
these United States, and see ! "What, upon commerce ? 
Compare Spain, Portugal, and Austria, with Britain, 
and see ! . "What, upon intelligence ? Blot out the Pa- 
pal nations, and what is lost to the intelligent world ? 
A few stars only would be missed from the sky. Blot 
out the Protestant nations ; and the effect would be like 
the sun setting at noon-day. Even the '^Very Rev. 
P. R. Kenrick, Y. &.," author of the ''Holy House of 
Loretto," would feel that the darkness was increasing 
around him. "What are their effects upon thrift and 
industry ? Compare Ireland with Scotland, or Con- 
naught with Ulster, or Cork with Belfast, and see ! 
What, upon morals ? Compare Italy with Scotland, 
France with England, and see ! The facts in the case 
are very plain, and beyond mistake by an honest in- 
quirer. Protestantism educates the mind, frees the 
spirit, extends the circle of thought and action, expands 
the affections, stimulates to independence, puts the 
Bible into the hands of all men, and teaches them to 
fear Grod, and to fear none else. Hence its effects, ev- 
ery where visible, on the people and nations that em- 
brace it. On the other hand, Popery seals to man the 



LETTERS. 237 



Back track. Beyond cure. Testimony. 

Book which the Lamb died to unseal, shackles the spir- 
it, forbids reasoning on religious truths, shuts up the 
affections to its own adherents, and seeks only the ex- 
tension of its power and the submission of the people. 
The high noon of its prosperity was the period known 
as the '^ Dark Ages ;" and it seeks now to put all things 
on the back track for those ages. It has no Sabbath 
— -no Bible — no preaching — nothing, nothing to elevate 
— ^nothing but a silly round of ceremonies as unmean- 
ing as they are absurd. Hence, as Wylie says in his 
recent excellent work on the Papacy, ''Wherever we\ 
meet Popery, there we meet moral degradation, mental j 
imbecility, indolence, improvidence, rags, and beggary/ 
No ameliorations of government — no genius or peculi- 
arities of race — no fertility of soil — no advantages of 
climate, seem able to withstand the baleful influence 
of this destructive superstition. It is the same amid 
the exhaustless resources of the New World as amid 
the civilization and arts of the old — it is the same amid 
the grandeurs of Switzerland and the historic glories 
of Italy, as among the bogs of Connaught and the 
wilds of the Hebrides." And the testimony of Macau- 
lay, in his eloquent History of England, is to the same 
effect: ''Throughout Christendom," he says, "what- 
ever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, 
in wealth, in the arts of life, has been made in spite 
of the Church of Rome, and has every where been in 
the inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest prov- 
inces in Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in 
poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual tor- 
por ; while Protestant countries, once proverbial for their 
sterility and barbarism, have been turned, by skill niul 



238 

Picture verified. A change. Spain. 

industry, into gardens, and can boast of a long list of 
heroes, statesmen, philosophers, and poets." Again, he 
says, ^'Whoever passes, in Grermany, from a Roman 
Catholic to a Protestant principality — in Switzerland, 
from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant canton — in Ire- 
land, from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant county, 
finds that he passes from a lower to a higher grade of 
civilization." 

A few months ago I was enabled to verify this pic- 
ture of the eloquent and philosophic historian. I passed 
from Grenoa to Turin, and from Turin to G-eneva 
through Chambery. About three or four miles from 
Greneva, you pass through a gate, leaving Sardinia be- 
hind you. In five minutes you are persuaded, by the 
style of building, the appearance of thrift, the eviden- 
ces of taste, of wealth, of intelligence, by the altered 
appearance of the people, the tillage, the mode of dress, 
that you are in a Protestant country. After spending 
a few days in G-eneva, I passed through Bonville and 
Sallanche to Chamouni. A few miles from Greneva, 
yoU pass through another gate, and enter the kingdom 
of Sardinia ; and the exchange of decent houses for 
huts — of neatly-dressed people for rags — of a self-sus- 
taining people for beggars — and the appearance of 
crosses, priests, and pictures of the Virgin, soon con- 
vince you that you are within the dominions of Popery. 
And so it is every where. 

But if you wish to see at a view the gigantic na- 
tional wreck which Popery can make, look at Spain. 
Washed by two seas, with splendid harbors — ^penetra- 
ted by noble rivers — with fertile plains extending from 
the Pyrenees to the Straits of Gibraltar — with a cli- 



LETTERS. 239 



Its position. Its ruin. Popish colonies. 

mate proverbially genial, and a soil proverbially pro- 
ductive — with the key of the Mediterranean by her 
girdle, and thus with power to command the trade of 
all Western Asia and Southern Europe, she holds a po- 
sition on Europe's map which should make her its great 
power. And she was so once. Under the Moorish 
kings, Spain was the garden of Europe. And why 
are her harbors without ships — why her mines un- 
wrought — why her national poverty — why her feather- 
weight influence among the nations — why her little 
exports — ^her decaying cities — ^her internal feuds — why 
has she fallen from a position once so high to one now 
so low ? The history of the infernal Inquisition, of the 
bloody bigotry of her bishops and priests, and of the su- 
perstition of her kings and queens, will answer these 
questions. Popery has ruined Spain, and sown all its 
fields with salt. 

And the national ruin that Popery achieves at home, 
she propagates abroad. Where have Spain or Portugal 
planted a colony that has not manifested in its devel- 
opment the evils of Popery ? Not in Mexico — not in 
Brazil — not in Chili or Peru — not in India, nor on the 
islands of the Pacific. If you wish to see, and within 
the reach of your own eye, the different effect of the 
two systems upon national prosperity, compare Papal 
Mexico, with its genial climate, its rich lands, its mines 
of gold, with New England, with its sterile soil, its 
cold climate, and barren hills. Sir, the striking differ- 
ence, and under circumstances so favorable to Mexico, 
can only be charged to the difference in religion which 
has obtained among the people. And this parallelism 
holds equally true, whether applied to nations, states, 



240 kirwan's letters. 

Is it the best form ? All become Papists. It debases. 

cantons, counties, cities, commerce, intelligence, mor- 
als, habits, or individuals. 

Now, Sir, in view of all this, whose substantial truth 
you, at least, will not question, permit me to urge upon 
you the inquiry. Is Popery the best form of religion for 
our country ? If it is the best form for one, it is the 
best for every citizen ; and would it be for the future 
glory and happiness of this country for us all to give in 
our allegiance to Pius IX. — ^to give up our Bibles — ^to 
give up preaching for the Mass — and Christ for Mary 
—and the only Mediator for an army of saints and 
nuns — and all our religious books for Butler's Lives 
of the Saints — and the history of Jesus for the devout 
perusal of the '' Holy House of Loretto," by the ^' Very 
Rev. P. R. Kenrick, V. Gr." — and for all of us to come 
to the conclusion that the claims of our long-coated 
priests are all right, and to submit to them ? I am 
sure that you, even you, to whom was dedicated a 
work containing a vindication of the infernal Inquisi- 
tion, would go against all this with a vengeance. You 
love your country, and its institutions, and its future 
glory too ardently to place it under the care of the 
Jesuit and the priest, and thus to make it a mere trib- 
utary to the rickety despotism of Rome, which is only 
kept in existence by French bayonets. 

But what would work evil to the mass can not be 
good for the individual ; and the question returns. Is 
Popery the best form of religion for the individual ? 
There is but one answer to the question ; it admits of 
but one. It is by debasing individuals it debases the 
masses, and lays its ax at the root of all national 
greatness. There is not a living person that is not the 



241 

Protestantism has made America. * 

worse for being a Papist ; nor can a man or woman 
embrace it without mental and moral injury. 

Protestantism, Sir, has made our land what it is. 
It originally colonized these states — it laid the mental 
and moral training of our people at the foundation of 
our institutions — it put up our school-houses and col- 
leges — it nerved the hearts of our sires to resist the 
encroachments of power — it fought and won the bat- 
tles of our independence — it has made us an enterpris- 
ing, law-abiding, and industrious people — it has found- 
ed our governments — framed our laws — given integrity 
to our judges — and has made this the home of the ex- 
ile from all lands. It has built our cities — whitened 
the ocean with our canvas, and has sent our ships to 
every bay, yes, to every creek of the ocean. It has 
extended loyalty, and thrift, and enterprise, and wealth, 
and security, and happiness from shore to shore — from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific, where the west is lost in 
the rising east. Nor can you or I indulge any vivid 
hopes for our country, save in its Christianized, that is 
to say, spiritually-Protestantized futurity. Let the 
Pope and the priest reign here as they do in Naples, 
Austria, and Rome, and then New York will be as 
Naples, and Baltimore as Rome, and our great and 
growing country like unto the empire of the ^house of 
Hapsburg, the Sleepy Hollow of the world ; and oui 
active, industrious, and thriving people, as lazy, as 
poor, as stupid, and as vicious as are our neighbors of 
Mexico, or as wicked and avaricious priests can make 
them. When the priest gains the ascendent here, the 
last rays of the sun of our glory are dying away on 
the summit of our Rocky Mountains. 

L 



242 

What to be done with Papists ? 

What, then, you will ask, is to be done with the Pa- 
pists and priests -that are rained down upon us from 
the old nations of Europe ? This question I will an- 
swer in my next. 

With great respect, truly yours. 



243 

Emigrants. Every where. More coming. 



LETTERXXV. 

Emigration — -must increase— mostly Popish. — What to be done for them 
— Liberty — Conscience — ^American Spirit. — Tide stayed until now. 
— Right of all Men to the Bible — Wickedness of withholding it. — 
Differences between Protestantism and Popery. — Edinburgh Irish 
Missions. — Rev. Mr. King. — Character of Priests. — Pilgrim of Struel. 
• — Treatment Priests deserve. 

My dear Sir, — There is, as all the world knows, a 
vast influx of emigrants from all the states of Europe 
to our shores. Upon the wharves of all our great com- 
mercial cities you see the garb, and you hear the tongue 
peculiar to all the nations and people extending from 
the North Cape to the Island of Sicily, and from the 
Black Sea to the western shores of Ireland. And yet 
they come. They are penetrating our interior — ^they 
are to be found in the city, in the town, on the prairie, 
in the woods, in the shop of the mechanic, breaking up 
a virgin soil into which a plowshare has never entered, 
and carrying with them their language, their customs, 
their morals, and their religion, to the foot of the Rocky 
Mountains, and from both the oceans that now bound 
our great country. And there is a buzzing stir amid 
the old nations of Europe, like unto that which may 
be heard in a bee-hive previous to its swarming, which 
clearly indicates that what of emigration we yet have 
seen here is but as the few ripe grapes when compared 
with the overflowing vintage, or but as the liitlo rise in 



244 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

Tenants of Europe. A saying. Majority Papists. 

our great rivers, caused by a few summer showers, 
when compared with our spring freshets, caused by the 
dissolving of our snows upon our extended mountain 
ranges. The masses of Europe are tenants, and they 
are beginning to feel the oppression of their landlords, 
and that from it there is no way of escape save by rev- 
olution or by emigration ; and as the chances of revo- 
lution are at present against them, they prefer to emi- 
grate. " Our gentry," said a noble Scotch clergyman 
to me, " are beginning to think more of sheep than of 
men, and are sending off their tenants to make room 
for their sheep and black cattle. Our people must go 
to America." 'VYou will not find a healthy person any 
where that is not thinking of going to America," said 
the guard of a stage-coach to me, as I was riding 
through Ireland. Soon we came to a stopping-place. 
A fine, rosy-cheeked girl, with health in all her move- 
ments, came with a message to the guard ; and de- 
termined to put his saying to the test, I said to her, 
''My fine girl, do you think of going to America?" 
" I am going next month, your honor," said she, her 
face radiant wdth smiles. The people of Europe are 
waking up to a sense of their wi'ongs ; and the more 
they manifest that they see and feel them, the more 
oppressive are their civil and ecclesiastical rulers ; so 
that, in the nature of things, great as the emigration 
now is here, it must be vastly increased. 

And as the majority of emigrants for some years past 
have been Papists, so it must continue to be. The 
Papal nations are the poorest, the worst governed, and 
the most oppressed ; and the Papists of Protestant na- 
tions, as of Britain, Prussia, and some of the minor 



KIR WAN's LETTERS. 245 

What to be done. Liberty of conscience. Taint. 

states of Grermany, are the least thrifty, and are those 
to whom a change of country would seem to offer the 
most inducements. So that for years to come there 
must be a vast yearly accession to our population of 
those educated under Popish institutions, and, of course, 
of Popish priests. And if Popery and its priests are 
what I have described them to be-:— if Popery in all 
lands, and to the extent to which it obtains, is a na- 
tional curse, the question with which I closed my last 
letter is a very grave one, " What is to be done with 
these Papists and priests ?" Will you permit me to in- 
dicate what I consider the true answer to the question ? 
Not a feeling must be indulged or manifested other 
than that of permitting them to enjoy, to the utmost 
extent of our institutions, a free and full liberty of con- 
science. Ignorant, superstitious, and semi-civilized as 
they may be, when naturalized they are citizens. Our 
Constitution knows neither Jew nor Grentile, Papist 
nor Protestant. All good citizens it treats as does a 
kind father his children. Nor must we show any jeal- 
ousy of placing a fitting man in a place of trust or 
power simply because he is a Papist. I rejoice, Sir, 
that you, a nominal Papist, are at the head of the judi- 
ciary of this great country, and that you were placed 
there by a thorough Protestant, who hated the Pope 
far more, I fear, than he hated sin, because of the ad- 
vantage it gives us, if, for no other reason, of contrast- 
ing the two systems. Think you that a Protestant, if 
pure as Marshall, if learned as Blackstonc, if eloquent 
as Webster, could be made chief justice of Cuba, or 
Mexico, or Naples, or even Belgium ? Would not the 
taint of Protestantism countervail all other qualifica- 



246 kirwan's letters. 

Rights of conscience. Sacred domain. Power gone. 

tions, and tend rather to secure his expulsion than his 
elevation ? 

And then we must teach them the rights of con- 
science, and to respect those rights — ^that Grod is the 
only lord of conscience. It is hard to learn them this, 
when their very conscience has been educated into the 
opposite belief, that the Church and the priest give 
laws to conscience, and that we are bound to persecute 
those who refuse compliance to those laws. It is a 
great lesson for us to teach, and for them to learn ; and 
when truly learned by them, the power of the priest is 
gone. If you. Sir, are conscientiously a Papist, I am 
conscientiously a Protestant, and to our Grod we are 
only accountable. Within the domain of conscience 
no Pope, prelate, or priest has a right to place his foot ; 
and the intruder within that sacred inclosure should 
be as unceremoniously expelled as were apostate angels 
from heaven, who were driven pell-m^U over its battle- 
ments, and cast down into everlasting chains and penal 
fire. The supremacy of conscience and the supremacy 
of the Pope are in the opposite scales ; as the one rises, 
the other sinks. The man ^jfho enthrones G-od in his 
conscience is lost to the priest. He has no longer any 
use for confessions, penances, or extreme unctions — for 
holy water or holy chrism. He is a subject of the 
perfect law of liberty. We must then teach them to 
assert their own rights of conscience, and to respect 
those of others. Then the priest will have lost all power 
to foment the people to such riots as have occurred in 
New York, St. Louis, and Milwaukie, and which have 
so clearly demonstrated that a change of country or 
climate does not soon change the nature of the hyena 



LETTERS. 247 



American spirit. Its power. Our way. 

"We must also seek to imbue them with the true 
spirit of our country. It is among the greatest of the 
many blessings of Heaven to our land that our present 
tide of emigration was held back until our people be- 
came sufficiently numerous, and our institutions suffi- 
ciently established, to be unaffected by it — ^until our 
people acquired a character of their own, and power to 
impress it upon those who seek here an asylum for 
themselves and their posterity. Had our present emi- 
gration taken place one hundred years ago, it would 
be substantially a transference here of Ireland and 
Grermany, and of the other European nations, with 
their language, and religion, and social institutions. 
But now it affects us but little more than do the fresh 
waters of the Hudson, the Susquehanna, or the Missis- 
sippi, the salt water of the ocean. Indeed, as the At- 
lantic takes these and other rivers into its bosom, and 
assimilates all their turbid waters to itself, imparting 
to them all its color, and salting them with its salt, so 
may our country receive into her arms the multitudes 
fleeing to her for refuge from the despotisms of the old 
world, and mold them all into the American form. 
Nothing here lives by divine right, but the true. We 
permit men to swagger as they see fit, and to put forth 
what claims they please ; but the moment they attempt 
to enforce claims by divine right, they soon learn their 
latitude and longitude. When priests claim to think 
for us, we only think the harder. The more they seek 
to induce us to sing hosannas to the Pope, the louder 
wo proclaim him to be the anti- Christ. The more tliey 
oppose the Bible, the more we print, circulate, and read 
it. And the more they circulate such books as '' The 



248 

Privilege of laughing. Our peculiarity. Individualisms lost. 

G-arden of the Soul," " Butler's Lives of the Saints," 
and " The Holy House of Loretto," by the erudite and 
philosophic P. R. Kenrick, V.G-., to revive the drooping 
faith of their flocks, the more we claim and exercise the 
privilege of laughing at them from one end of the land 
to the other. 

The fact is, that we. Sir, have a character peculiarly 
our own. Our fathers taught us to think for ourselves ; 
and this spirit is fostered by all our institutions. The 
prevalence of education makes the masses intelligent ; 
and before our general intelligence, and the Protestant 
atmosphere that covers the land, ignorance and cre- 
dulity are fast disappearing. Indeed, the tendency is 
less to faith than to infidelity. Nothing is now taken 
for granted, however venerable for years, or however 
intrenched behind authority, without examination. 
Whether right or wrong, this is the American peculi- 
arity. And if we only rightly and truly impress it 
upon the emigrants swarming here from other lands, 
it will be the death of Popery. The Irish, English, 
French, Scotch, Germans, Italians, Hollanders come 
here, not to propagate their national characteristics, 
but, like different ingredients thrown together, each 
yielding, in a chemical process, their peculiarities, and 
all uniting to form a new substance. The British em- 
igrant gives up his queen — the French his king, presi- 
dent, prince-president, or consul — ^the Grerman his king 
or emperor — and why should the Papist cling to the 
Pope ? "Why should he fling from his body the chains 
of civil despotism, and hug the chains of spiritual des- 
potism, which are eating into his soul ? Why should he 
not seek a spiritual as well as civil emancipation ? He 



LETTERS. 249 



Harmless thunder. Contagion. Our mill. 



is here beyond the reach of the arm of despotism ; and, 
imbibing the true American spirit, he should think, 
and read, and act for himself. The men that wear the 
fillets made from the wool of holy sheep, and their 
priests, may rage, but their rage, like the thunders that 
are sometimes heard in the distance of a fine morning, 
reminding us of the storms of the night, excites no ter- 
ror. When the bear is within bars, he may rage until 
he is willing to stop. 

And this American spirit is so contagious, that there 
are but few emigrants who are not in some measure 
affected by it. Even the priests feel it. However 
they may feel about it, they have to yield to it. '' Why 
do you attend our worship and read our Bible ?" said 
I to a Papist, on my outward voyage, who was going 
home to Ireland on a visit. ^' 0, I have been some 
years in America," was his reply. He had caught the 
spirit of our country. And while the exceedingly illit- 
erate, and those advanced in life, who emigrate here, 
may, with few exceptions, retain their Popish preju- 
dices, and may be proof against the contagious spirit 
of our country, it will not be so with the young and 
intelligent, nor with their children. In the nature of 
things, it can not be so, as a rule. The son of an Irish- 
man will neither wear his father's breeches nor brogues, 
nor will he kneel to his priest. The son of an Irish- 
man, a Frenchman, or Italian is an American, and ho 
will not be a Romanist. We have a mill, of which 
the common school is the nether, and the Bible and its 
institutions the upper stone ; into this mill let us cast 
the people of all countries and forms of religion that 
come here, and they will come out in i]w grist Amev- 

T. 9 



1 



250 kirwan's letters. 

Right to the Bible. Post-office. Why such war. 

icans and Protestants. And the highest wisdom of our 
country is to keep this mill in vigorous operation. 

We must also teach them that it is the inalienahle 
right of every man to read the Bible. As prophets and 
apostles spoke '^the words of this life" in the hearing of 
all that composed their audiences, and to the end that 
all should understand them, so their messages, when 
committed to writing and to the press, are for the pe- 
rusal of all, and that all may understand them. And 
what right has the priest to obtrude himself, and to 
take from you the Bible, or to compel you to receive 
its teachings only as he interprets them ? When a 
boy, and absent from home, had you not a right to take 
your father's letters from the post-office, and to read 
them, and to find out their meaning, without going to 
the priest ? And is not Grod the father of us all — and 
is not the Bible his paternal counsel to us — and what 
right has the priest to take it from us ? What if some 
parts are omitted that he deems inspired, why not per- 
mit you to read the rest ? What if some passages are 
not translated to suit him ? these are but few in com- 
parison with those to which no objections are made. 
There is no excuse that can be made for the opposition 
of the priest to the Bible. If I could not get a copy of 
the Bible without having annexed to it the history of 
'' The Holy House of Loretto," I would take it; if I 
could not get it save with the minor prophets omitted, 
I would yet take it. Protestant ministers are not 
afraid of their people reading the Douay Bible, and 
never burn it ; and why should Popish priests wage so 
deadly a war, not only against the Protestant Bible, 
but against the unrestricted circulation and reading 



251 

What we owe to the Bible. Right discussions. 

even of their own authorized versions ? Their wicked- 
ness in all this must be exposed — their object, which 
is to keep their people in ignorance of their horrible 
deceptions, must be every where proclaimed. We must 
not compel any to read the "Word of G-od, but we must 
see to it that none are prevented from reading it. We 
owe, Sir, to a free, unrestricted use of the Bible all we 
are, and all for which we may reasonably hope. And 
Bible-hating, Bible-burning piiests are the men who, 
more than all others, are placing the ax at the root of 
the tree of our liberty, under whose branches we nov/ 
so quietly and securely repose. When the Word of 
G-od is read by all our people, the craft of the priest is 
over — ^to use a figure of Luther, a big hole is made 
in the head of his drum. And, like unto the " Holy 
House of Loretto," when deserted in Dalmatia, he may 
take up his line of march for Italy. 

We must also wake up the mind of our Papal pop- 
ulation to discussions upon the great topics on which 
Popery and Protestantism differ. There is a kind of 
controversy which is greatly to be deplored — there is 
another kind which is greatly to be desired, and \vhich 
is absolutely necessary as long as error exists to oppose 
the truth. There was once a feeling that inveterate 
drunkards were beyond reclamation ; and there was a 
prevalent sentiment in the Protestant world that Pa- 
pists were beyond the influence of truth, and the hope 
of conversion ; but abundant facts prove both to bo 
groundless. Many priests, and people in multitudes, 
have and are yearly deserting and denouncing Popery. 
I spent a part of two Sabbath evcmings in the Irish 
Mission Chapel in Edinburgh, in which the Rov. Mr 



252 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

Irish missions. Edinburgh. People need light. 

M'Menomy, once a Papist, presides. It was crowded 
to an overflow with Protestants and Papists. Subjects 
were selected for discussion, and they were discussed 
freely on both sides. The Bible was the standard to 
which every thing was brought. I heard there shrewd 
Irish Papists, with remarkable dexterity, advocate the 
dogmas and customs of their Church ; and the good 
results could be seen in the benches crowded with con- 
verts from Romanism, and in the multitudes inquiring 
whether the religion of the priest '^vas or was not the 
religion of the Bible. I attended another meeting, 
where, in a more quiet way, McLaughlin, '' the miller 
of the glens of Antrim," who was cursed from the al- 
tar, is doing also a noble work among the Papists of 
Edmburgh. They meet and discuss the claims and 
doctrines of the priest ; and the result could be seen in 
an upper room filled with plain, humble, but yet intel- 
ligent people, who were rescued from the wiles of 'Hhe 
man of sin," and who could give an intelligent reason 
for the hope that was in them. And it is in ways like 
these that priests, and the people by tens of thousands 
in Ireland, are passing over to the religion of the Bible. 
YvThat the people need is light. Romanism has kept 
them in darkness, and has filled their minds with fa- 
bles, prejudices, and monstrous superstitions ; let the 
light of Heaven into these minds, and these fables, 
prejudices, and superstitions are seen in their true 
character, and are at once abandoned. Hence the 
awful dread of discussion — and of the Bible — and of 
good books — -and even of common schools, by the priests, 
save where their own tools are the teachers. Nothing 
suffers by right discussion but error; and, as in Ire- 



LETTERS. 253 



Rev. A. King. Father Ignatius. Character of priests. 

land, so here, all right means should be used to wake 
up the mind of our entire Papal population to an ex- 
amination of the claims and doctrines of their Church, 
to the despotism of the priest, and to their duty to as- 
sert their Christian liberty in a land of freedom. One 
man like the eloquent and warm-hearted King, of 
Dublin, whose name will not soon be forgotten among 
us, would be of incalculable benefit to all our great 
cities. Familiar with the controversy, courteous in 
his demeanor, brilliant in debate, ready at repartee, 
full to an overflow of Irish humor, and with a heart 
catholic in its instincts, and under the guidance of 
the law of love, he is the terror of the priest and a fa- 
vorite of the people. Copying the example of his mag- 
nificence of New York, Father Ignatius, a predesti- 
nated dolt, fled to Halifax before him ; and the right 
reverends and the honorables, who head the Papal 
gatherings at the Rotunda, decline his invitations to 
fair discussion. And thus the eyes of multitudes are 
opening to a perception of the errors of Romanism, and 
to the wickedness of its priests. 

And, above all, we must seek to place before the 
people the true character of their priests. What, Sir, 
was their character before the Reformation ? Wliat 
was it at the time of the Reformation, as drawn by Pa- 
pal writers ? To the last degree wicked. And what 
is it now in Rome ? ^'Rome, in its priests and people, 
has not been, for a thousand years, such a sink of cor- 
ruption as it is at this hour," said a gentleman to nio 
in Rome, who has resided there for years, and wlio has 
had every opportunity to know it well. And if such 
is the character of her priests at the very seat of her 



254 kirwan's letters. 

Mercy unlimited. Pilgrim of Struel. A ghost. 

power and her infallibility, what must be their char- 
acter in her distant provinces ? Better, I think, than 
in Rome, but yet bad. While I am far from saying 
that no Popish priests are pious or sincere, and would 
not limit the mercy of Grod, who sends his rain upon 
the just and the unjust, I am yet free to say that they 
awfully impose upon their people, and for no object but 
gain. 

In addition to the testimony already adduced to sup- 
port this opinion, permit me to state another, as narra- 
ted at length in Hardy's little volume on the '' Holy 
Wells of Ireland." A gentleman found a young man 
performing stations at the Well of Struel, near Down- 
patrick, and held with him the following conversa- 
tion: 

" What is your name ? 

" John L alley. 

" Where are you from ? 

" The county of Gralway. 

" What induced you to come so far to do stations at 
this place ? 

''Last November, a spirit in the shape of a man ap- 
peared to me every night for three weeks, near the 
house in which I lived in the county of Gralway ; and 
one night I took courage and spoke to it, saying, ' In 
the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Grhost, do me 
no harm, nor any one belonging to me, and tell me 
what it is that troubles you.' The spirit then replied, 
' I am glad you spoke, for this is the last night I would 
have appeared to you. I have been dead these nine- 
teen years, and you were but three and a half old 
when I departed. Before my death I promised to do 



kirwan's letters. 255 

Paddy Brady. The sand-pit. Purgatory. 

stations at Struel, but never performed my vow ; and 
because I did not do them, I can not rest.' 

" Did you inquire what was his name ? 

'' Yes ; his name was Paddy Brady. 

" Where did he say he lived when he promised to 
do the stations ? 

^' In the neighborhood of Downpatrick, near Struel. 

''* What was his calling when living ? 

'• A carpenter. 

" Where did he say his spirit had been for the last 
nineteen years ? 

" For the first five years he was up to his neck in 
water, under a bridge in this county ; and for the last 
fourteen he has been in a sand-pit in the county Gral- 
way. 

"Are you certam that no person ever attempted to 
impose upon you in this affair ? Were you ever in- 
clined to doubt about it ? 

" No, never ; for the night he was going away, he 
took hold of my hand, and left a black mark on it, and 
went off in a flash of light. 

" Have you been in a bad state of health lately ? 

"No. 

" Have you felt your head very uneasy or in pain? 

" Never in my life. 

" Where do you believe the spirit is now ? 

" In Purgatory. 

" And was he in Purgatory at the time he was un- 
der the bridge and in the sand-pit ? 

" Yes. 

"Why did you not come sooner to do the sta- 
tions ? 



256 

Father Coyne. Masses. Promising priest. 

" Because he told me that the proper time to do 
them would be from May to Midsummer. 

" Have you ever spoke to your parish priest respect- 
ing this strange aifair ? 

" Yes, I have. 

" "What did he advise you to do ? 

" He advised me to do the stations. 

" What is your parish priest's name ? 

" Coyne. 

'^ Has the Bishop of G-alv^ay ever heard of the mat- 
ter? 

" Mr. Coyne is the under-bishop of the diocese. 

" Were there any masses said for the soul of this 
man after he died ? 

" Yes ; his mother got two masses celebrated, for 
which she paid. 

''And could not the masses get him out of Purga- 
tory ? 

'' The masses will hold good ; and if he had not 
promised to do the stations, they would have fully an- 
swered. 

'' Have you seen the priest of this parish since you 
came ? 

" I have. 

" Have you told him all about the matter ? 

''Yes. 

" Did he say any thing against your doing these 
stations ? 

" Oh no. 

" Did he say he would write to your priest about you ? 

" Yes. 

" Has he done so ? 



KIR WAN's LETTERS. 257 

Stations performed fasting. Punishment prolonged. 

- '^ Not yet. 

'' Have you brought any letter from your parish priest 
to the priest of this parish ? 

'^No. 

'^ How long have you been here ? 

" To-morrow will be the tenth day. 

'^ "What time do you begin your stations ? 

'' About six o'clock in the morning, and I do six sta- 
tions before I break my fast. I have not done until 
seven o'clock in the evening. 

'' I see you are taking a smoke ; do you never take 
a drink of water through the day ? 

^' No, neither bite or sup till the six stations are fin- 
ished. 

'' Do you believe that you will get any benefit of 
your own soul in consequence of your doing these sta- 
tions for the spirit you supposed you have seen ? 

'^ Yes, I do ; for the spirit told me if I would do this 
for him, that he would do five hundred times as much 
for me when he would be happy. 

'' If you had not engaged to do these, what do you 
think would have been the consequence ? 

" The spirit said that if I would not consent to do 
this for him now, he would have to remain in the sand- 
pit fifty-five years longer. 

" Could he get no one but you to do the stations for 
him? 

'' I was the person fiixed on since I was three years 
and a half old. 

" Have you made any agreement to see the spirit 
when you go back ? 

^' No ; for as soon as I am done he will be hapjiy. 



258 KIRWAN S LETTERS. 

Total darkness. Wretched state. Worse things, 

" Do you believe that he is now in pain ? 

" I bless my Lord that he is hot now in pain, but he 
is in total darkness. 

'' Do you think that the Lord Jesus Christ could have 
saved him without either masses or the stations ? 

^' To this he made no reply, but, in a hesitating 
manner, expressed a persuasion that the masses and 
stations were really necessary. 

" Can you read? 

" No. 

" How do you earn your bread ? 

" I am a brogue-maker. 

'' Is your father or mother alive ? 

" My mother is alive. 

" Have you walked from the county of Gralway here ? 

" I have, barefoot. 

" How do you support yourself while here ? 

" I have no means of support but w^hat I get from 
the poor family of this house ; they are very good to 
me. 

" Will you go home as soon as you have done all the 
stations ? 

'' I w^ill not be able, my feet are so sore. 

'' He then showed his feet ; they were very much 
bruised, and, when he pulled up his drawers, his knees 
were nearly in a state of complete ulceration." 

Here, Sir, is a picture of the degradation produced 
by Popery, and of the superstition encouraged by its 
priests at the present hom\ And this is not an exceptiont* 
to their influence, but an illustration of it. And black 
and bad as it is, it is sense when compared with things 
and scenes of daily occurrence under the eye of the 



LETTERS. 259 



Heathenism extended. Break the grasp. 

Pope himself. And if they do better in this country, 
it is owing, not to their principles, but to the civiliza- 
tion amid which they live. Romanism is heathenism 
extended, and its priests are no more Christian minis- 
ters than were the priests of Jupiter. So I believe, and 
believing, I so declare. And their influence, through 
all its extent, is only evil, as to the temporal, social, 
intellectual, spiritual, and eternal interests of men. 
Their grasp upon the. mind and conscience of their 
dupes is like that of the priests of India upon the poor 
Hindoos, and is retained in the same way. To break 
that grasp, the true character of the priest must be un- 
folded ; and, when truly seen, the people will desert 
them, and leave them here and every where, as in 
Rome, to parade their vestments, and go through their 
senseless ceremonies, within the sacred inclosures of 
empty churches. 

Such, Sir, is my answer to the question, "What is to 
be done to our Papists and priests ? We must give light 
to the people. But, from the Pope to the most illiter- 
ate Irish mass-monger, the priests are impostors, claim- 
ing a divine right to exercise their impositions, and to 
damn us all, unless we submit to them. Whatever 
they may receive at the hand of Grod, they deserve 
nothing at the hand of man but to be treated as im- 
postors. 

With great respect, truly yours. 



260 KIR W AN 'S LETTERS. 

Mortal sin. If Protestantism was so guilty. 



LETTER XXVI. 

Strictures on Popery ended. — Popery to be extirpated — its End hasten- 
ing. — Friends of Freedom Enemies of Popery .--Suspended Wrath. — 
Religion essential to national Greatness. — What true Religion is. — 
Nature of the Church of God — its Object and End. — Tendency to vi- 
carious Religion. — Great Curse of Christendom. 

My DEAR SiRj — I have concluded all that I origmally . 
intended to say to you on the Subject of Romanism, 
and all that I now deem necessary to expose it, in its 
theory, its government, its practices, its frauds, its 
fruits, and its priests. Believing it, as I do, to be a 
system of huge iniquity, framed like that of Hindoo- 
ism, which in so many points it resembles, by the cun- 
ning of ages, and solely for the benefit of the priest, I 
have spoken plainly and honestly. While I know that, 
in the estimate of the priest, my sin is mortal, of so 
deep a dye as to defy the cleaning influence of holy 
water or holy oil, I yet believe that from you, and mul- 
titudes of others in this land, my statements will be 
candidly examined, and my motives duly appreciated. 
If statements such as I have made in these letters 
against Romanism could be made as truly against any 
one branch of the Protestant Church, they would be 
fatal to. its existence. All the world would unite in 
hissing it to Purgatory. And, unless I read backward 
the indications of Providence, the time is not far distant 
when Popery will be thus treated by the nations and 



KIR WAN's LETTERS. 261 



Extending its alliance. The worse the better. 

people which have been so long crushed beneath the 
weight of its intolerable exactions. Jn this opinion I 
am aware I differ from many Protestants, who look 
upon Popery as extending its alliance with the despot- 
isms of Europe for mutual support. But this only tends 
to hasten the event for which the earth is groaning. 
The men are every where multiplying whose ardent 
souls are thirsting for freedom as does the hunted hart 
for the water-brooks ; and wherever found, whether in 
Rome, Naples, Tuscany, or Austria, the moment they 
see that the priest and the despot are united to crush 
them, they will fling to the winds the banner of revolt 
against both. Indeed, they are now doing so by tens 
of thousands. The tighter Popery now screws on her 
fetters, the better. The flesh will quiver where the 
pincers tear — the blood will follow where the knife is 
driven ; and the more the victims of its cruelty are mul- 
tiplied, the nearer the hour when the Lord will destroy 
it with the brightness of his coming. We never so feel 
like crushing a serpent as when it claims the right of 
casting its slimy folds around us, and of injecting its 
deadly poison into our veins. Over Romanism and its 
ministers the wrath of Grod and the wrath of man are 
alike suspended ; and their unblushing claims, their 
monstrous pretensions, their wicked deceptions, their 
alliance with despotisms, their readiness to use the 
powers of heaven or of hell, as may best suit their pur- 
pose, and without the least compunctions, are only 
hastening the hour when that suspended wrath shall 
fall upon them and grind them to powder. Indeed, 
it is among the darkest enigmas of Providence that they 
have been permitted to continue so long. 



262 kirwan's letters. 

Things to be considered. True religion. Some religion. 

Will you permit me, Sir, in this concluding letter, 
to say to you, and to the thoughtful and educated 
minds of this land, a few things which I could not so 
well say any where else, and whose bearings you will 
readily see upon our individual, national, temporal, 
and eternal interests. I ask for them the considera- 
tion which their essential importance demands. For 
the sake of distinctness, and to prevent all confusion 
of thought, I will present what I have to say under a 
few heads. 

1. I wish you well to consider the importance of 
true religion to national greatness. Although the 
Christian is the religion established in the minds of 
the American people, we have no religion established 
by law. And for this, our great peculiarity, the Chris- 
tian has far more reason of thankfulness than the in- 
fidel. It places the religion of Grod on a vantage 
ground among us, which it has nowhere else. "While, 
in the eye of our law, the Jew, the Christian, the Athe- 
ist, the Pagan, are on the same level as to all civil 
rights, we are not, therefore, an irreligious people, nor 
should our men of education and position therefore re- 
gard all forms of religion or irreligion with the same 
favor. Man is laid under a constitutional necessity to 
have a religion of some kind ; and if he does not em- 
brace the true, he w^ill a false system. Some men may 
be Atheists, and assert that ours is a fatherless world 
— some may be infidels, and deny a divine revelation 
— ^but the masses of the people will be neither Atheists 
nor infidels ; unless instructed into a knowledge of the 
Christian religion, they will be the dupes of gloomy su- 
perstition or of burning fanaticism. The evidence of 



LETTERS. 263 



Mere negations. Bulls of despots and priests. 

all history proves this statement true, as does also the 
present state of the nations. Mere negations can not 
satisfy the religious longings of our nature ; and if we 
know not the true Grod, we will have many gods — if 
not the only Mediator, we will have many mediators — 
if not the way of true worship, we will have will wor- 
ship^ — if not the Bible, we will believe in lying legends, 
old wives' fables, or any spiritual frauds which crafty 
and wicked priests may invent. And the influence of 
their religion upon individuals and nations must be 
known and read of all men, and has already been il- 
lustrated in these letters. 

These things being so, can you, Sir, can any man, 
be indifferent as to the form of religion which shall 
finally obtain among the masses of the people which 
shall crowd this great confederacy of states ? The re- 
ligion of this country will give form and direction to its 
destiny. The Bible is the Magna Charta of human 
liberty, and hence the bitter hatred of it by despot and 
priest. Alexander of Russia and the Popes of Rome 
have sent out their bulls to bellow every where against 
it. As the religion of the Bible obtains in this land, 
the passions of men will be subdued, their principles 
will be formed and strengthened, our laws will be just 
and humane, our people will be intelligent and indus- 
trious, the national mind will be stimulated, commerce 
and the arts will flourish, and Grod will make our offi- 
cers peace and our exactors righteousness. If forms of 
religion not sanctioned by the Bible obtain, the reverse 
of all this must be the result ; the chapters of our he- 
roic history will soon come to an end ; and however 
protracted may be those which shall record our decline 



264 kirwan's letters. 

True and cheap way. What religion is. How it acts. 

and fall, decline and fall we must. If Romanism pre- 
vails here, nothing on earth can prevent us from sink- 
ing as low as the Romans. By motives. Sir, like 
these, I would urge upon you, and upon all men of 
character, position, and influence in this land, to cast 
the cnthe weight of their influence in favor of the ex- 
tension of the religion of the Bible among all our people. 
It is the true and the cheapest way, if not the only one, 
of perpetuating our institutions ; and to send them 
down, unimpaired, to bless our posterity, as they are 
blessing us. 

2. I wish you and all men to form a definite idea of 
what true religion is. Because so often used as synony- 
mous with sect, or with an adjective designating some 
sect, untaught minds are very liable to mistake in ref- 
erence to it. "We speak of the Papal, of the Protestant, 
of the Jewish religion — of the Presbyterian, Methodist, 
Baptist, Episcopal religion ; and when many consider 
it at all, they consider it objectively, or in the light of 
sectarian controversy. Now true religion exists apart 
from all this, and is independent of all sects, parties, and 
controversies. It is a right disposition of mind and 
heart toward God^ exercising itself in all appropriate 
ways. There never was, nor will there ever be but 
one true religion in the world. "Whether existing in 
the bosoms of angels or of men, it is the same in sub- 
stance. It is independent, as to its essence, of all 
priestly interferences, and of all social relations. It is 
not assent to certain theological opinions — ^nor is it zeal 
for certain peculiarities — nor is it a rigid adherence to 
ritual observances ; it is a right disposition toward G-od, 
manifesting itself in ways of beneficence toward man. 



KIR WAN'S LETTERS. 265 

Bible view. Romish view. Extent of false views. 

Wherever that right disposition exists, and is truly 
manifested, there true religion exists. That right dis- 
position is of G-od ; and the person that possesses and 
manifests it, by whatever name called, within what- 
ever temples he worships, is a child of Grod. And all 
church privileges and sacraments belong to such a man, 
by right of the new disposition wrought within him by 
the power of Grod. 

This, Sir, is the Bible and the Protestant view of 
true religion. Its seat is in the heart — its author is 
Grod — its end and life are to do good to men and to 
glorify God. I need not tell you how opposite is all 
this to the fundamental doctrines of Romanism, which 
resolves religion into submission to forms, sacraments, 
and ceremonies, and to the influence of priestly inter- 
ferences, and which persecutes and anathematizes none 
so severely as those who worship God in spirit and in 
truth, having no confidence in the flesh, and no faith 
in the priest. 

To what a fearful extent has this view of true re- 
ligion fallen out of the minds of men ! The heathen 
will return from the most exhausting pilgrimages, and 
from oft-repeated ablutions, to lie and steal, and to com- 
mit all sin with greediness. At the canonical hour the 
Arab will bow in prayer before Allah, and will then 
rush upon his victim and drive his spear through his 
heart. The Papist will rush from the Carnival to the 
austerities of Lent, and from the humiliations of Good 
Friday to the frolics and festivities of Easter. The 
Spanish buccaneer will devoutly kiss the picture of the 
Virgin which he carries in his bosom, and then, for the 
sake of a few dollars, plunge his stiletto into ihe bowels 

M 



266 kiravan's letters. 

Praying for a prize. NaUire of the Church. 

of his victim. And the priest will go up the steps of 
Ara Coeli, praying the Virgin as devoutly to bless him 
with a prize ticket in the lottery, as to intercede with 
her Son to secure for him mercy. And even, Sir, in 
the Protestant world, the tendency of the human heart 
is too obviously manifested in the multitudes who re- 
solve true religion into a mere formalism. The forms 
and ceremonies of religion are but little worth when its 
power and truth are absent ; and when the form and 
ceremony not only take the place of, but array themi^ 
selves in hostility against its power and truth, they are 
only evil, and that continually. "Well will it be for the 
future of America if these truths are understood and 
carried out by its mind and its men. 

3. I wish you to form a true and definite opinion ^s 
to the true nature of the Church of God. In the light 
of Scripture and reason, such an opinion is easily form- 
ed, although, amid the fogs of schoolmen. Papists, and 
High Churchmen of all kinds and creeds, to find the 
Church is as hopeless a task as to find the quadrature 
of the circle, or the inextinguishable lamp. A Christian 
Church is a company of believers in Christ met togeth- 
er for worship. The entire Church of Grod, in its visi- 
ble form, is composed of all who profess the true re- 
ligion, and their children — in its invisible form, of all 
who truly believe and manifest a right disposition of 
mind and heart toward G-od and man. As the grains 
of gold exist amid heaps of sand, so the true people of 
G-od are found amid those who make a profession of his 
name. It must be quite obvious that those who pro- 
fess the true religion are not separated from the visible 
Church by any peculiarity which they may adopt, not 



kirwan's letters. 267 

Visible Church. Not confined. Schismatics. 

affecting the great principles of truth ; and that, though 
different branches of the visible Church may take unto 
themselves distinctive names descriptive of their pe- 
culiarities, they are not therefore separated from the 
great body of believers. As the various tribes of men, 
though called by different names, and speaking differ- 
ent languages, and possessing peculiar habits, belong to 
the human family, so the various denominations of men 
who profess the true religion, though differing in many 
things, form component parts of the visible Church. 
So that the true Church is not confined to the domains 
of Popery, Prelacy, or Presbytery ; it is composed of all 
who receive and practice the truth. Pascal and Fene- 
lon, though Papists — Rutherford, and Chalmers, and 
Wesley, and Robert Hall, and Leighton, and Wilber- 
force, and Grurney, though Protestants, differing on 
minor topics, all belonged to it ; and their true fame 
and name should be equally dear to the entire Church 
These views, which might be expanded into a volume, 
must be here compressed into a paragraph ; but I hold 
them as of vital importance to all the great interests of 
this land. The Papist confines the Church to those 
who submit to the claims of the Pope, and sends all 
others to perdition. The Prelatist of the Oxford stamp 
confines the Church to those who believe in the divin- 
ity of the order of diocesan bishops, and receive ordi- 
nances from them, and gives all others over to uncov- 
enanted mercies. While yet others would confine the 
visible Church to those who enter it thi'ough the ordi- 
nance of baptism by immersion. In my view, Sir, 
these sentiments are all false and schismatical. And 
the mind and the men of this nation should rise in open 



268 kirwan's letters. 

A great principle. Object of the Church. Perverted. 

opposition to these schismatics, whether they hail from 
Rome or from Oxford, and who are here seeking, for 
no good end, to sow the seeds of dissension among be- 
lievers in the Grospel. There is a great principle of 
Christian charity that underlies all sectarian differences, 
and which is of more importance than all of them to- 
gether ; and when that principle rises to its due im- 
portance, the priest, who never turns his back to the 
altar, or ascends the pulpit but to flourish his scalping- 
knife, will find that he is driving a poor business. 

The most simple and beautifal institution in the 
world is the Church of Grod ; to it G-od has committed 
the truth as contained in the Bible, and with the com- 
mand to make it known to all men ; and its great ob- 
ject and end are to bind men to G-od and to one an- 
other, by the diffusion of the truth, by inducing men to 
obey it, and by teaching all men, where they can not 
see alike, to exercise toward each other mutual chari- 
ty. It is deeply to be deplored that the G-ospel, which 
is the perfect law of liberty, has too often been made 
a yoke of bondage ; that the Church, designed to be 
the joyous residence of all those made free by Christ, 
has been so often converted into a fortress of priestly 
intolerance. Judaizing views of the G-ospel, which 
confine its blessings to certain tribes — which give effi- 
cacy to ordinances only when administered by certain 
hands — low and narrow views of the Church, which 
confine its existence and privileges within certain lines, 
and which shut up all admission to it save by the doors 
opened and guarded by certain porters, have too often 
dashed the waters of life with a strong infusion of 
wormwood and gall. But this is all the bitter fruit of 



269 

Old leaven. Not fitted for us. Vicarious religion. 

Romanism ; and .where these thmgs exist in Protestant 
churches, they are simply proof that the old leaven has 
not been all cast out — that some of the bitter roots of 
the old tree remain. 

The priests, ministers, or people w^ho cut off from the 
Church of God all but themselves, and who exclude 
from heaven all but those who enter by their gate, are 
those to whom the least tolerance should be shown. 
The man who truly repents of sin, and believes on the 
Lord Jesus Christ, is adopted into the family of Grod ; 
and to expel such a man from the Church for refusing 
submission to our claims, is like a servant expelling a 
child from the house of his father for refusing to com- 
ply with his low whims. Such men may do for Italy 
or Oxford, but they should receive no countenance in 
the country of Washington. 

4. Permit me. Sir, in closing, to say a word on the 
tendency of human nature to a vicarious religion. 
Truth is revealed for the benefit of the individual mind 
— and true religion has to do with the individual heart, 
and its graces are to be manifested by the individuals 
who possess it. The object of the ministry is to preach 
the truth, and to exhort all men to believe and practice 
it. Neither the priest nor the minister can repent for 
others — nor believe for others — nor secure meetness for 
heaven for others. Nor can any man employ them as 
his attorney to transact his individual business with 
the court of heaven for him. And yet to all this there 
is a tendency in human nature ; and upon this tend- 
ency Romanism has built up a vast system of fraud 
and falsehood. " Why," said a friend of mine to a 
highly-cultivated man and eminent politician, who had 



270 KIR WAN's LETTERS. 

A question and answer. Religion a personal thing. 

been educated in the Romish faith, and yet held it in 
a waning regard, " why do Papists trust so much to 
their priests, and pay so little attention to what so 
vastly concerns their eternal welfare ?" His reply was 
characteristic. '^ We have," said he, ''but little time 
to think about religion — and it is hard to know much 
about it — and we let the priest do the thing up for us, 
as he has nothing else to do — and then, when we come 
to die, we send for him to fix us up to meet Grod." 
Here is the whole matter revealed in a sentence. The 
priests transfer the merits of one man to another — ^they 
transfer the benefit of devotional exercises from one 
man to another — indeed, they are the hired proxies 
through whom the masses of the people seek to serve 
Grod. And they make the people believe that if they 
only cling to the Church of Rome, and leave all with 
them, all will be well. This, Sir, is what I mean by 
a vicarious religion, and tlirough which Papal priests 
have ruined generations, and filled the world with the 
fame of their pious frauds. 

In the great work, Sir, of saving the soul, neither 
you nor I can do anything by proxy nor by a priestly 
attorney. We sin for ourselves — none can sin for us ; 
and the soul that sinneth, it shall die. So we must 
repent and believe for ourselves — none can repent or 
believe for us ; and he that believeth in the Lord Je- 
sus Christ shall be saved ; he that oonfesseth and for- 
saketh his sin, shall find mercy, and none the less read- 
ily if all the priests on earth were in Paradise or Pur- 
gatory. 



kirwan's letters. 271 

Blessings resulting from these views. 

Such, Sir, are my views, very briefly, but yet freely 
and frankly expressed to you on the importance of re- 
ligion to national greatness- — on the nature of true re- 
ligion — -on the nature of the Church of Grod — and on 
the tendency in human nature to a vicarious religion. 
I believe them worthy of your attention, and of that 
of all the educated and influential minds of this land. 
If correct, all good men should unite in supporting and 
extending them. If adopted by all our people, they 
would extend the benign influence of true religion over 
them all — they would make all true believers in Christ 
to feel and act as brethren — they would destroy the 
trade of the priest, a result most devoutly to be de- 
sired — they would extinguish all sectarian jealousies, 
and induce all men to live unto G-od for themselves 
— they would make our land a mountain of holiness, 
and the dwelling-place of righteousness. They would 
prevent for evermore the transplanting here of the 
upas-tree of Popery, under whose baneful shade noth- 
ing flourishes but despotism, superstition, priestly in- 
tolerance, ignorance, beggary, and moral and social 
corruption. 

My work. Sir, is done. My letters are ended. I 
cast them as bread upon the waters, with the hope that 
they may be found after many days. Should you be 
induced by them to re-examine the system of Popery, 
and to reject it, and to set yourself in a cordial oppo- 
sition to it, as have multitudes of the greatest men that 
have ever adorned our race, you would write your nniue 
high up on the pillars which support tlie temple of our 



272 

The great curse of Christendom. 

freedom, and you would do much to save our land, in 
all future time, from that mystery of iniquity which, 
viewed in whatever light, is at this moment the great 
curse of Christendom. 

With great respect, yours. 



THE END. 



ROMAIISM AT HOME. 

LETTERS ADDRESSED TO THE HON. ROGER B. TANEY, 
CHIEF-JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES. 

BY KIR WAN. 

12M0, muslin, 75 CENTS. 

Your letters, so far as regards the grammatical construction of phrases, 
and a correct and almost elegant use of Anglo-Saxon words, are not un- 
worthy of the country which produced a Dean Swift or a Goldsmith. They 
are also pervaded by a silvery thread of wit which is unmistakably Irish. — 
Bishop Hughes's Letters in reply to Kirwan, 

We leave all details to the reader — and the book will have many read- 
ers — merely remarking, that he will have a piquant treat, served up in the 
author's best style, who will amuse him, instruct him, and make him feel 
deeply serious by turns. — Fre&byterian. 

He presents in this book a vivid picture. He tells us what he saw in 
Rome, Naples, Sardinia, Ireland, and other places, in that clear, terse, and 
pointed style for which Kirwan has become famous. — Watcltman and Obs. 
His easy and familiar style, together with the happy vein of good nature 
that marks his writings, make them attractive whatever be their subject. 
— Syracuse Religious Recorder. 

The book will have a powerful influence. — Zion*s Herald. 
Emphatically a book for the people. His satire is as keen as an Arctic 
frost, and his sarcasms run as smoothly, and burn as deeply as scalding oil. 
— Christian Advocate and Journal. 

This work is written with great boldness, earnestness, and point. — Spnng- 
field Republican. 

These letters are written by a ready and fearless hand, abounding in 
traveling and personal reminiscences. — Troy Times. 

The style of the work is spirited, and the author's satire is sharp and 
polished. — Literary World. 

We have no hesitation in pronouncing this book the ablest and most cut- 
ting piece of invective we have ever met with. The writer strikes such 
sledge-hammer blows, that they must be severely felt. His vivacit}', wit, 
and peculiar felicity of argument and illustration will commend his works 
to thousands of readers, who take little interest in religious controversy, 
but will always remember what they have seen so clearly enforced.— Piio- 
FESSOR Frost, in Scott's Weekly. 

As a work of real interest, written in a pleasant style, adorned with 
pleasant images, and seasoned with irony, wit, and humor, interspersed 
with xjleasant anecdotes ; description of the magniliccnce of Rome ; the 
effects of its architecture, music, and the arts upon the observer ; ^yith tho 
mental deductions of a mindfully imbued with American views and feelings, 
this volume may be placed among the most popular of tho day, to read \vhich, 
many would gladl}^ put aside the novels of Pickens or Thackeray. — W'lrjyk 
Daily Advertiser. 



®q tlie late ^rmtetit Mu, 



The Works of Stephen Olin, D.D. LL.D. 

Late President of the Wesleyan University. In two Vol- 
umes, 12mo, Muslin, $1 00 each. Vol. I. Sermons and 
Sketches. — ^Vol. 11. Lectures and Addresses. 
"These volumes are published in compliance with a very general 
desire on the part of those who were acquainted with the late Pres- 
ident Olin. The Sermons are full of thought and suggestive; pre- 
senting a good idea of the simple style and earnest manner of one 
who stood among the foremost in the first rank of impressive and ef- 
fective preachers of the Gospel. The greater portion of the second 
volume is devoted to the discussion of topics connected with Chris- 
tian Education. The author's large and comprehensive views of 
this important subject were both developed and modified by the ex- 
perience of a quarter of a century, during which he was brought in 
contact with students of great diversity and mental and moral struc- 
ture. The Lectures were written out in full but a few months be- 
fore the author's death. They are followed by four of his Discours- 
es to the Graduating Classes of the University. The remainder of 
the volume is occupied with Addresses, Essays, &c." 



By the same Anthor, 

Travels in the Holy Land. 

Travels in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land. 12 

Engravings. 2 vols, 8vo, Muslin, $2 50. 

Dr. Olin's excellent volumes convey a great amount of informa- 
tion ; they are remarkably accurate. His volumes contain the best 
account of Egypt that has appeared in this country, perhaps in the 
language.— Dr. Durbin. 

This work is rich in information, pervaded by a lofly spirit, and 
entitled to entire confidence. — Dr. Potter. 

We can most confidently and cordially recommend this book to 
our readers, as a production which does honor to the author and the 
church of which he has so long been a distinguished member and 
an ornament. — Methodist Quarterly Review. 



HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

329 Pearl Street, Franklin Square, JV.Y, 



Rev. Albert Barnes's 

MnitB nil tljt Mtm €uimni, 

For Families and Sunday Schools. 

In Eleven Volumes, with Maps and Engravings, 12mo, Muslin, 

75 cents per Volume, any of which may be obtained 

separately, if desired. 

Vols. I., II. The Four Gospels. — III. The Acts of the Apostles. — IV. 
The Epistle to the Romans. — V. The First Epistle to the Cor- 
inthians. — VI. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, and the 
Epistle to the Galatians. — VII. The Epistles to the Ephesians, 
the Colossians, and the Philippians. — VIII. The Epistles to the 
Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. — IX. The Epistle 
to the Hebrews. — X. The General Epistles of James, Peter, 
John, and Jude. — XI. The Book of Revelation 

QUESTIONS on the above, 18mo, 15 cents per Volume, viz.: 
Vol. I. Matthew. — II. Mark and Luke. — III. John. — IV. Acts. — V. Ro- 
mans. — VI. First Corinthians. — VII. Hebrews. 



Testimonials from Distinguished British Clergymen. 

iFrom the Hon. and Rev. Baptist W. Noel, M.A.] 

I heartily .wish success to the Commentary of Mr. A. Barnes. He has 
more learning than Scott ; more critical decision than Henry; more spiritual 
discernment than Whitby ; more copiousness than Benson ; and more judg- 
ment than Gill. He affords precisely the aid which an English reader re- 
quires when seeking to ascertain the exact sense of obscure passages ; and 
these " Notes" will, in my opinion, render essential service to the cause of 
religion. 

iFrom the Rev. Alexander Fletcher, D.D., Finsbury Chapd.'i 

I have consulted Barnes's Commentary on Corinthians with much satis- 
faction, and am pleased to find that it exemplifies the same piety, talent, re- 
search, and liveliness, furnished by the preceding Commentaries on the 
books of the New Testament, which have been prepared by the same emi- 
nent divine. 

iFrom the Rev. Richard Alliott, LL.D., Lambeth.'^ 

I have great pleasure in recommending Barnes's " Notes" to the Chris- 
tian public. 

iFrom the Rev. J. W. Massie, D.D., Manchester ."^ 

I have often consulted Barnes's " Notes" on parts of the Sacred Volume, 
and found them replete with profitable and suggestive matter. I wish ev- 
ery village pastor and Sunday school teacher in Britain had a complete copy 
of them. They would afford valuable assistance to many in more exalted 
spheres. 



2 foumiB'B fA\m n \\t Mm ^BsttimBnt. 



iFrom the Rev. J. Sherman, Surrey Chapel.^ 
Your edition of Barnes's " Notes" appears to me both carefully and well 
got up, and must be of great use to Sunday school teachers and others whose 
means will not allow them to have more expensive and elaborate commen- 
taries. Without subscribing to every sentiment of the author, there can be 
no doubt the " Notes" are valuable, judicious, and evangelical. You have 
my sincere wish for their extensive circulation. 

iFrom the Rev. Ralph Wardlaw, D.D.] 
I have examined the " Notes" of the Rev. Albert Barnes on a considera- 
ble variety of testing passages, and, so far as my examination has gone, I 
feel confident in pronouncing them to be characterized, in no ordinary de- 
gree, by discriminative judgment, sound theology, unostentatious learning, 
practical wisdom, and evangelical piety. A boon of greater benefit to the 
public can not be bestowed than, along with correct and cheap Bibles, to 
give wide circulation, by cheap editions, to Commentaries on the Bible such 
as this ; and especially in times when the exclusive authority of Holy Scrip- 
ture, in all matters of faith and practice, requires to be so firmly maintained 
and universally inculcated. 

[From Sir Culling E. Eardley, Bart.'] 
I have much pleasure in expressing my admiration of Barnes's " Notes." 
Independently of the merit of the work itself, from its simplicity and clear- 
ness to even the humblest intelligence, it is well got up ; the maps are very 
good, and its moderate price places it within the reach of most classes You 
have my best wishes in the publication. 

iFrom the Rev. W. Lindsay Alexander, D.D., Edinburgh.] 
I have long regarded the " Notes" of the Rev. Albert Barnes on the Gos- 
pels and Epistles as the best commentary for popular use extant on the New 
Testament. They are simple, clear, concise, and accurate ; embodying the 
results of much reading, without any offensive parade of learning. It would 
be well that they were in the hands of all who read the New Testament. 

iFrom the Rev. T. W. Jenkyn, D.D., F.G.S., Coward College, London.] 
For the last twenty years I have been a reader of the various works of 
the Rev. Albert Barnes. From my strong attachment to his sound and man- 
ly theology, I hailed with delight the first appearance of his " Notes on the 
New Testament." I have read every volume as it came forth in the Amer- 
ican edition, and consider all of them as rich in sober, clear, faithful, and 
learned exposition of the "mind of the Spirit" in the Divine Word. * * * In 
these modest volumes, Mr. Barnes supplies his readers with all the results 
of modern criticism, without making any parade of his learning in Hebrew 
and Syriac quotations. Occasional slips in Greek criticism have escaped 
some of the best and most diligent interpreters ; but Mr. Barnes has as few 
of ^;hem as any commentator that I know. For comprehensive views in 
theology, for the application of doctrines to the affairs of every-day life, and 
for a tendency to produce and to vindicate revivals of religion in the church- 
es of Christ, the English language has not an exposition equal to it. 



%mtB'3 JMn m i^t Mm ^i^HtamBirt. 3 



iFrom the Rev. J. A. James, Carr's Lane Chapel, Birmingham. "l 
Barnes is, in my judgment, the best popular expositor of the Scriptures of 
his day. His judgment is sound, and his discrimination accurate. He is 
concise without being obscure ; and yet sufficiently explicit without being 
tedious. I sometimes diffisr from him, but never till I have well considered 
his views as well as my own. 

[.From the Rev. Edward Steane, D.D., Camberwell.} 
Barnes's " Notes on the New Testament" are a valuable addition to the 
commentaries we already possess on the Word of God. 

[From the Rev. John Harris, D.D., Cheshunt College.} 
Barnes's " Exposition" is undoubtedly the best work of its kind. Besides 
showing an extensive acquaintance with the writings of other expositors, it 
is pervaded by an evangelical spirit, written in a clear, natural, and vigor- 
ous style, and is replete with good sense. 

[From the Rev. Jabez Burns, D.D., ^non Chapel, St. Marylebone.'\ 
I am delighted with Barnes's " Notes ;" I wish they had a place in every 
family in the land. 

[From the Rev. George Clayton, Walworth.2 
Having made myself acquainted with Albert Barnes's New Testament, I 
cordially concur with others of my brethren in giving the work my warmest 
recommendation. 

[From the Rev. Adam Thomson, D.D., Coldstream.} 
Since the days of Mathew Henry, no commentator that I know of has ap- 
peared, who, for general usefulness, and particularly for affording to minis- 
ters of the Gospel the best sort of assistance, can be compared with Albert 
Barnes. 

[From the Rev. E. Bickersteth, M.A., Rector of Watton, Herts.} 
I have been in the habit of occasionally consulting Mr. Barnes's "Expo- 
sitions." I think highly of his industry and piety, and believe that he has 
gathered much useful illustration of that glorious One Book, which must 
ever be the chief study of the Christian. 

[From the Rev. Dr. Gumming, England.} 
I know of no commentary so succinct, full, and impartial. It is fitted to 
instruct the preacher no less than the Sunday school teacher. It seems to 
be his grand effort to unveil solely what "the Spirit saith to the Churches." 
I venture to predict that his faithful and lucid comments will find a response 
in the minds, hearts, and consciences of most Christian readers. 

[From the London Church Examiner.} 
The fame of Albert Barnes, of Philadelphia, has become European. As a 
writer, he has few competitors in his own land, and not many in ours. 



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